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COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 




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MEDIEVAL AND 
MODERN HISTORY 



BY 



PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS 

HONORARY LECTURER IN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI 

AUTHOR OF "ancient HISTORY," "A GENERAL HISTORY" 

AND "HISTORY AS PAST ETHICS" 



SECO.Vn REVISED EDITIOiY 
lA^CLUDING THE WORLD WAR, 1914-1918 




GINN AND COMPANY 

BOSTON . NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
ATLANTA • DALLAS • COLUMBUS • SAN FRANCISCO 



COPYRIGHT, 1885, 1905, 1920, BY PHILIP VAN NESS MYERS 

ENTERED AT STATIONERS* HALL 

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

420.6 



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PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 



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X^ 



The real history of the human race is the history of tendencies which 
are perceived by the mind, and not of events which are discovered by 
the senses. — Buckle 

Historical facts should not be a burden to the memory but an illumina- 
tion of the soul. — Lord Acton 

But history ought surely in some degree, if it is worth anything, to antici- 
pate the lessons of time. We shall all no doubt be wise after the event; 
we study history that we may be wise before the event. — Seeley 



PREFACE TO THE SECOND REVISED EDITION 

The original edition of this work was issued thirty-five years 
ago — in 1885. The first revised edition was published twenty 
years later. The second revised edition is now given out. In 
this edition the text of the mediaeval period has been compressed 
in order to make possible, without unduly increasing the size of 
the book, the expansion of the history of the later modern cen- 
turies and the addition of the story of the World War. The 
fundamental issues involved in this colossal conflict are viewed as 
the virtual consummation of the democratic and nationalistic move- 
ments which have so largely dominated the historic development 
since the French Revolution of 1789. 

A number of new maps have been added to the earlier series and 
the list of cuts and plates increased by many new illustrations. 
The selected references at the end of each chapter will, it is 
hoped, serve not-merely as a guide, but also as an enticement, to 
wider reading and study, 

P. V. N. M. 

College Hill 
Cincinnati 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGH 

I. General Introduction- : the Chief Factors in Euro- 
pean Civilization i 

PART I. THE MIDDLE AGES 

FIRST PERIOD — THE DARK AGES 

(From the Fall of Rome to the Eleventh Centurj) 

II. The Barbarian Kingdoms 7 

III. The Church and its Institutions 14 

I. The Conversion of the Barbarians 14 

II. The Rise of Monasticism 22 

III. The Rise of the Papacy 28 

IV. The Fusion of Latin and Teuton 35 

V. The Roman Empire in the East 43 

VI. The Rise of Islam 47 

VII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the Empire 

IN THE West 59 

VIII. The Northmen : the Coming of the Vikings ... 69 

SECOND PERIOD — THE AGE OF REVIVAL 

(From the Opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of 
America by Columbus in 1492) 

IX. Feudalism and Chivalry 75 

I. FeudaHsm 75 

II. Chivalry 88 

X. The Norman Conquest of England 96 

XL The Papacy and the Empire 103 

XII. The Crusades (1096-1273) iio 

XIII. Supremacy of the Papacy; Decline of its Temporal 

Power 134 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 

CHAI'TEK PAGE 

XIV. Mongolian Conquests and Settlements in Europe . 143 

XV. The Growth of the Towns 151 

XVI. The Universities and the Schoolmen 166 

XVII. Growth of the Nations: Formation of National 

Governments and Literatures 176 

I. England 177 

II. France 196 

III. Spain 204 

IV. Germany 208 

V. Russia 216 

VI. Italy 216 

VII. The Northern Countries 221 

XVin. The Renaissance 223 

I. The Beginnings of the Renaissance 223 

II. The Renaissance in Italy 227 

III. General Effects of the Renaissance 241 



PART 11. THE MODERN AGE 

THIRD PERIOD — THE ERA OF THE REFORMATION 

(From the Discovery of America, in i4c)2, to the Peace of Westphalia, in 164S) 

xix. tjeocirai-hical discoveries and the beginnings of 

Modern Colonization 247 

XX. The Beginnings of the Reformation 263 

XXI. The Ascendancy of Spain; her Relation to the 

Catholic Reaction 286 

I. Reign of the Emperor Charles V (1519-1556) . . 286 
II. Spain under Philip II (1556-1598) 292 

XXII. The Tudors and the English Reformation (1485- 

1603) 298 

I. Introductory 298 

II. The Reign of Henry VII (14S5-1509) .... 299 
III. England severed from the Papacy by Henry VIII 

(1509-1547) 300 



CONTENTS ix 

CHAPTER PAGE 

IV. Changes in Doctrine and Ritual under Edward VI 

(1547-1553) 310 

V. Reaction under Mary (i 553-1 558) 312 

VI. Final Establishment of Protestantism under Eliza- 
beth (i 558-1 603) 313 

XXIII. The Revolt of the Netherlands: Rise of the 

Dutch Republic (1572-1609) 324 

XXIV. The Huguenot Wars in France (i 562-1629) . . . 335 
XXV. The Thirty Years' War (161 8-1 648) 343 

FOURTH rERIOD — THE ERA OF THE POLITICAL 
REVOLUTION 

(From the Peace of Westphalia, in 164S, to the Treaty of Versailles, in igig) 

/. THE AGE OE ABSOLUTE AfONARCHY: PRELUDE TO 
THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION (1648-1789) 

XXVI. The Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings 
AND THE Maxims of the Enlightened 

Despots 352 

XXVII. The Ascendancy of France under Louis XIV 

(1643-1715) 35S 

XXVIII. The Stuakts and the English Revolution 

(1603-1689) 370 

I. The First Two Stuarts 370 

II. The Commonwealth and the Protectorate (1649- 

1660) 282 



III. The Restored Stuarts 



390 



IV. Reign of William and Mary (i 689-1 702) .... 396 

XXIX. The Rise of Russia: Peter the Great (1682-1725) 400 
XXX. The Rise of Prussia : Frederick the Great 

(1 740-1 786) 412 

XXXI. England in the Eighteenth Century 420 

XXXII. Austria under the Benevolent Despot Emperor 

Joseph II (i 780-1 790) 433 



X CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

//. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE NAPOLEONIC 
ERA (1789-1815) 

XXXIII. The French Revolution (17S9-1799) 437 

I. Causes of the Revolution ; the States-General 

of 1789 437 

II. The National, or Constituent Assembly (June 17, 

1789-September 30, 1791) 450 

III. The Legislative Assembly (October i, 1791- 

September 19, 1792) 456 

IV. The National Convention (September 20, 1792- 

October 26, 1795) 459 

V. The Directory (October 27, 1795-November 9, 

1799) 470 

XXXIV. The Consulate and the Napoleonic Empire 

(I 799-181 5) 477 

I. The Consulate (1799-1804) 477 

II. The Napoleonic Empire ; the War of Liberation 

(1S04-1815) 481 

///. FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA TO THE TREATY 
OF VERSAILLES (1815-1920) 

XXXV. The Congress of Vienna and Metternich . . . 505 

XXXVI. France since the Second Restoration (181 5-1 91 4) 516 
XXXVII. England from the Battle of Waterloo to the 

World War (1 81 5- 19 14) 525 

I. Progress towards Democracy 525 

II. Extension of the Principle of Religious Equality . 531 
III. England's Relations with Ireland 535 

XXXVIII. The Liberation and Unification of Italy . . . 540 

XXXIX. The Making of the New German Empire . . . 553 

XL. Russia from the Congress of Vienna to the 

World War (1815-1914) 571 

I. Russia's Wars against Turkey and her Allies . . 571 
II. The Emancipation of the Serfs, and the Liberal 

Movement 571; 



CONTENTS xi 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XLI. The New Industrialism 579 

XLII. European Expansion in the Nineteenth and the 

EARLY Twentieth Century 584 

I. Causes and General Phases of the Expansion 

Movement . C84 

II. The Expansion of England jSo 

III. The Expansion of France 507 

IV. The Expansion of Germany 500 

V. The Expansion of Russia 60 1 

VI. The Expansion of the United States .... 602 
VII. Check to European Expansion and Aggression in 

Eastern Asia 603 

XLIII. Evolution toward World Federation 610 

XLIV. The World War (1914-1918) 616 

I. Causes of the War and Train of Events leading 

up to It 616 

II. Outstanding Events of the War 635 

INDEX AND PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 673 



LIST OF PLATES 

PAGE 

Plate I 

KING ALBERT DECORATING FRENCH OFFICERS (In Color) 

Frontispiece 
Plate II 

THE CITY OF MECCA AND THE SACRED KAABA .... 48 

Plate III 

VIEW OF FLORENCE, ITALY, ABOUT THE YEAR I490 . . 160 

Plate IV 

MILAN CATHEDRAL 1 64 

Plate V 

THE FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD 288 

Plate VI 

SECTION OF OLD LONDON BRIDGE 390 

Plate VII 

ST. mark's square, VENICE 554 

Plate VIII 

THE RHEIMS CATHEDRAL OF TO-DAY 654 

Plate IX 

THE PEACE CONGRESS IN THE HALL OF MIRRORS, VER- 
SAILLES 666 



LIST OF MAPS 

COLORED MAPS 

Based in the main on Kiepert, Schrader, Droysen, Spruner-Sieglin, Poole, and 

Freeman. Many of the maps have been so modified by additions and omissions that 
as they here appear they are practically new charts. 

PAGE 

The Barbarian Kingdoms about A. d. 500 8 

The Saracen Empire about A. D. 750 52 

Europe in the Time of Charles the Great, A. D. 814 62 

The Western Empire as divided at Verdun, A. D. 843 66 

The Danelaw 72 

Hitchin Manor, England, about 18 16 .' 78 

Europe and the Orient in 1096 118 

Lands of the Holy Roman Empire under the Franconian Emperors, 

1024-1125 13S 

Angevin Dominions 178 

France about 1180 198 

Spanish Kingdoms in 1360 . 206 

Globe de Martin Behaim, 1492, and Globe Dore vers 1528 250 

Explorations and Colonies of the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth 

Centuries 258 

Europe at the Accession of the Emperor Charles V, 1 519 286 

Europe after the Peace of Westphalia, 1648 . . . ^ 346 

Central Europe in 1660 362 

Europe after the Treaties of Utrecht and Rastadt, 1713-1714 364 

The Baltic Lands, about 1701 406 

The Partition of Poland 410 

Prussia under Frederick the Great, 1740-17S6 414 

Central Europe in 1780 434 

Central Europe in 180 1 478 

Central Europe in iSio . . . .... 494 ^^ 

Europe after 181 5 ^10 ^ 

Italy in 1859 e<2 

Distribution of Races in Austria-Hungary 568 

Southeastern Europe after the Treaty of Berlin (1878) 574 ^ 

The Partition of Africa 590 

European Expansion 602 

The Far East 606 

xiii 



u^ 



^ 



XIV LIST OF MAPS 

PAGE 

FAirope in 19 1 4 618 

Southeastern Europe in 1914 -, • • 626 

Europe 670 

SKETCH MAPS 

Italy under the Lombards 11 

The Roman Empire under Justinian 44 

Discoveries of the Northmen 70 

The Mongol Empire under Jenghis Khan and his Immediate Successors 

(thirteenth century) 145 

The Empire of the Ottoman Turks about 1464 149 

The Hansa Towns and their Chief Foreign Settlements 156 

Italy about the Middle of the Fifteenth Century 217 

Russia and the Scandinavian Countries at the Close of the Middle Ages 221 

The Netherlands at the Truce of 1609 332 

Asian Turkey and the Bagdad Railway , . 622 

Mittel-Europa and Turkish Annex 646 

Battle Line on the Western Front July 15, 1918 658 



MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN 
HISTORY 

CHAPTER I 

GENERAL INTRODUCTION: THE CHIEF FACTORS IN 
EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 

1. Preliminary Survey. In an earlier volume we sketched 
briefly the affairs of men from the time when they first emerged 
from the obscurity of the past to the break-up of the Roman Em- 
pire in the West.^ In the present work we propose to continue the 
narrative there begun, and bring the story down to our own day. 

The fourteen centuries of history included in our survey are 
generally regarded as forming two periods, namely, the Middle 
Ages, which embrace the period lying between the dissolution of 
the Roman Empire in the West and the opening of the sixteenth 
century, and the Modern Age, which extends from the end of the 
mediaeval epoch- to the present time. The Middle Ages present 
two phases — the so-called Dark Ages and the Age of Revival. 
The Modern Age, as we shall view it, also forms two divisions — 
the Era of the Protestant Reformation and the Era of the Politi- 
cal Revolution. 

2. Chief Characteristics of the Four Periods. The Dark 
Ages, which extend from the fall of Rome to about the end of 
the tenth or the opening of the eleventh century, mark a period of 

1 Our Ancient History practically ends with this great revolution of the fifth 
century of the Christian era, although in order to meet the requirements of some 
schools there is given in concluding chapters a brief resume of events down to the 
Restoration of the Empire by Charlemagne, a.d. Soo. 

2 See Ancient History, 2d Rev. Ed., p. 17, n. 1. 

T 



2 GENERAL INTRODUCTION [§ 2 

decline in civilization^ and a great lessening of the light of culture 
which for a thousand years and more had illumined the Mediter- 
ranean lands. The period was one of origins — of the beginnings 
of peoples, of languages, and of institutions. 

The Age of Revival begins about the opening of the eleventh 
century and merges with a new epoch during the fifteenth — the 
century which marks the discovery of the New World. During all 
this time civilization was making slow but sure advances: social 
order was gradually triumphing over feudal anarchy, and govern- 
ments were becoming more regular. The last part of the period 
especially was marked by a great intellectual revival, — ^a move- 
ment known as the Renaissance, or "New Birth," — by improve- 
ments, inventions, and discoveries, which greatly stirred men's 
minds and awakened them as from a sleep. The epoch witnessed 
the great struggle between the Papacy and the Holy Roman 
Empire, the two most historically important institutions of the 
mediaeval time. The Crusades, or Holy Wars, were the most 
remarkable undertakings of the age. 

The Era of the Reformation embraces the sixteenth century 
and the first half of the seventeenth. The period is characterized 
by the great religious movement known as the Reformation, and 
the tremendous struggle between Catholicism and Protestantism, 
Almost all the wars of the period were religious wars. The last 
great combat was the Thirty Years' War in Germany, which was 
closed by the celebrated Peace of Westphalia, in 1648. After 
this date the disputes and wars between parties and nations were 
dynastic or political rather than religious in character. 

The Era of the Political Revolution extends from the Peace of 
Westphalia to the Treaty of Versailles, 19 19. The age is espe- 
cially characterized by a prolonged conflict between despotic and 
liberal principles of government. Outstanding events of the epoch 
were the English Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of 
1776, the French Revolution of 1789, and the World War of 1914. 

Having now made a general survey of the region we are to 

1 This was a continuation of the decline which had begun before the break-up of the 
Western Roman Empire. See Ancient History, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 548. 



§ 3] SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FALL OF ROME 3 

traverse, having marked the successive stages of the progressive 
course of European civilization, — the intellectual, the religious, 
and the political revolution, — we must turn back to our starting 
point, the fall of Rome. 

3. Relation to World History of the Fall of Rome. The 
calamity which in the fifth century befell the Roman Empire in 
the West is sometimes spoken of as an event marking the extinc- 
tion of ancient civilization. The treasures of the Old World are 
represented as having been destroyed, and mankind as obliged 
to take a fresh start, — to lay the foundations of civilization anew. 
It was not so. All or almost all that was really valuable in the 
accumulations of antiquity escaped harm, and became sooner or 
later the possession of the succeeding ages. 

The event was not an unrelieved calamity, because fortunately 
the floods that seemed to be sweeping so much away were not the 
mountain torrent, which covers fruitful fields with worthless drift, 
but the overflowing Nile with its rich deposits. Over all the 
regions covered by the barbarian inundation a new stratum of 
population was thrown down, a new soil formed that was capable 
of nourishing a better civilization than any the world had yet 
seen. Or, to use the figure of Draper, we may liken the precipita- 
tion of the northern barbarians upon the expiring Roman Empire 
to the heaping of fresh fuel upon a dying fire; for a time it burns 
lower and seems almost extinguished, but soon it bursts through 
the added fuel, and flames up with redoubled energy and ardor. 

4. The Three Chief Elements of European Civilization. We 
must now notice what survived the catastrophe of the fifth cen- 
tury, what it was that Rome transmitted to the peoples of the new- 
forming world. This renders necessary an analysis of the elements 
of civilization. 

European civilization is largely the result of the blending of 
three historic elements, — the Classical, the Hebrew, and the 
Teutonic. 

By the classical element in civilization is meant that whole 
body of arts, sciences, literatures, laws, manners, ideas, social 
arrangements, and models of imperial and municipal government 



4 GENERAL INTRODUCTION [§ 4 

— everything, in a word, save Christianity — that Greece and 
Rome gave to mediaeval and modern Europe. Taken together, 
these things constituted a valuable gift to the new northern race 
that was henceforth to represent civilization. It is true that the 
barbarian invaders of the Empire seemed at first utterly indifferent 
to these things; that the masterpieces of anticjue art were buried 
beneath the rubbish of sacked villas and cities; and that the pre- 
cious manuscripts of the old sages and poets, because they were 
pagan productions and hence regarded as dangerous to Christian 
faith, were often suffered to lie neglected in the libraries of cathe- 
drals and convents. Nevertheless, classical antiquity, as we shall 
learn, was the instructor of the Middle Ages. 

By the Hebrew element in history is meant Christianity. This 
has been a most potent factor in modern civilization. It tamed 
the barbarian conquerors of Rome. It filled Europe with mon- 
asteries, cathedrals, and schools. It inspired the Crusades and 
aided powerfully in the creation of chivalry. In short, it has so 
colored the life and so molded the institutions of the European 
peoples that their history is very largely a story of this religion, 
which, first going forth from Judea, was given to the younger 
world by the missionaries of Rome. Among the doctrines taught 
by the new religion were the unity of God, the brotherhood of 
man, and immortality, — doctrines which have greatly helped to 
make the modern so different from the ancient world. 

By the Teutonic element in history is meant the barbarian 
peoples of Indo-European speech — the Goths, Franks, Danes, 
Angles, Saxons, and kindred tribes' — who at the time of the break- 
up of the Roman Empire dwelt in central and northwestern 
Europe or had pushed into the Roman provinces and taken part 
in the overthrow of the Imperial Roman government. These folk, 
though of course they had the social institutions and customs 
of a primitive people, were poor in those things in which the 
Romans were rich. They had neither arts, nor sciences, nor 
philosophies. But they possessed, in general, a fine capacity for 

1 As to race, they belonged, in the main, to the " Nordic " race of present-day 
anthropologists. 



§5] FACTORS IN EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION 5 

growth and culture and achievement; and because of this they 
were destined to play a great role in the history of later times. 

5. The Relative Importance in European History of the 
Classical, the Christian, and the Teutonic Element. The ques- 
tion as to the influence which each of these great historical factors 
has exercised upon the development of European civilization is a 
very important one for the historical student, for the reason that 
his whole conception of history will be colored by the answer he 
gives to it. Gibbon, for instance, exalted the classical element 
and depreciated Christianity, representing this religion rather as a 
retarding than as a helpful force in the life of the European peo- 
ples. This misconception of the real place in history that Chris- 
tianity actually holds is a chief fault of Gibbon's great work, The 
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 

On the other hand, some Church historians so represent his- 
tory as to give Christianity credit for almost all the progress 
made by the European peoples since the advent of Christ. This 
is to undervalue the other historical factors. 

Still others, again, represent the Teutonic element as the chief 
force in modern civilization, and to the barbarian subverters of the 
ancient civilization, and their kin of a later time, give chief credit 
for the freedom and progress achieved by the peoples of Europe. 

It is certain that we should allow the exclusive claims of none 
of these schools of interpreters of history. Modern civilization, 
as we have already intimated, is a very composite product. It 
has resulted from the mixing and mutual action and reaction 
upon one another of all the historical elements and agencies that 
we have mentioned — and many minor ones besides. If any one 
of these elements were taken from the civilization of to-day, it 
would be something wholly different from what it is. 

6. Celts, Slavs, and Other Peoples. Having noticed the 
Romans and the Teutons, the two most important of the peoples 
that present themselves to us at the time of the fall of Rome, if 
we now name the Celts, the Slavs, the Arabians, and the Mongols 
and Turks, we shall have under view the chief actors in the 
drama of mediaeval and of a large part of modern history. 



6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION [§ 6 

At the commencement of the mediaeval era the Celts were in 
front of the Teutons, clinging to the western edge of the Euro- 
pean continent, and engaged in a bitter contest with these latter 
folk, which, in the antagonism of England and Ireland, was 
destined to extend itself to our own day. 

The Slavs were in the rear of the Teutonic tribes, pressing 
them on even as the Celts in front were struggling to resist their 
advance. These peoples, backward in civilization, will play only 
an obscure part in the transactions of the mediaeval era, but in 
the course of the modern period will assume a most commanding 
position among the European nations. 

The Arabians were hidden in their deserts; but in the seventh 
century we shall see them, animated by a wonderful religious 
enthusiasm, issue from their peninsula and begin a contest with 
the Christian nations which, in its varying phases, was destined 
to fill a large part of the mediaeval period. 

The Mongols and Turks were buried in central Asia. They 
will appear late in the eleventh century, proselytes for the most 
part of Mohammedanism; and, as the religious ardor of the 
Semitic Arabians grows cool, we shall see the Islam standard car- 
ried forward by these zealous converts of another race, and finally, 
in the fifteenth century, we shall see the Crescent, the adopted 
emblem of the new religion, placed by the Ottoman Turks above 
the dome of St. Sophia in Constantinople. 

As the Middle Ages draw to a close, the remote nations of 
eastern Asia will gradually come within our circle of vision; 
and, as the Modern Age dawns, we shall catch a glimpse of new 
continents and strange races of men beyond the Atlantic. 



PART I. THE MIDDLE AGES 
FIRST PERIOD — THE DARK AGES 

(From the Fall of Rome to the Eleventh Century) 

CHAPTER II 
THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS 

7. Introductory. In one of the concluding chapters of our 
Ancient History, as a part of the story of the break-up of the 
Roman Empire in the West, we gave some account of the migra- 
tions and settlements of the Teutonic tribes. In the present 
chapter we shall indicate briefly the political fortunes, for the 
two centuries and more following the fall of Rome, of the prin- 
cipal kingdoms set up by the barbarian chieftains in the different 
parts of the old Empire. 

8. Kingdom of the Ostrogoths (a.d. 493-554). Odoacer will 
be recalled as the barbarian chief who dethroned the last of the 
Western Roman emperors.^ His feeble government in Italy 
lasted only seventeen years, when it was brought to an end by 
the invasion of the Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) under Theodoric, 
the greatest of their chiefs, who set up in Italy a new dominion 
known as the Kingdom of the Ostrogoths. 

The reign of Theodoric covered thirty-three years (a.d. 493- 
526), — years of such quiet and prosperity as Italy had not known 
since the happy era of the Antonines. The king made good 
his promise that his reign should be such that " the only regret of 
the people should be that the Goths had not come at an earlier 

1 See Andeiii Hision>, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 547. 
7 



8 THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS [§ 9 

period." His effort was to preserve Roman civilization, and to this 
end he repaired the old Roman roads, restored the monuments of 
the Empire that were falling into decay, and in so far as possible 
nmintained Roman law and custom. Theodoric's chief minister 
and adviser was Cassiodorus, a statesman and writer of Roman 
birth, whose constant but unfortunately vain effort was to effect a 
union of the concjuerors and the conquered, and thus to establish 
in Italy a strong and permanent Romano-Gothic state under the 

rule of the royal 
house of the Ostro- 
goths. 

The kingdom es- 
tablished by the rare 
abilities of The- 
odoric lasted only 
twenty-seven years 
after his death. It 
was destroyed by 
the generals of Jus- 

^ T, ... ,, tinian. Emperor of 

Pig. I. Tomb of 1 heodoric at Ravenna , t- 

/T7 , ^ UN the East (sect, sco) ; 

(From a photograph) ^ o / ) 

and Italy, freed from 
the barbarians, was for a time reunited to the Empire. 

9. Kingdom of the Visigoths (a.d. 415-711). The Visigoths 
(Western Goths) were already in possession of southern Gaul 
and the greater part of Spain when the line of Western Roman 
emperors was brought to an end by the act of Odoacer and his 
companions. They were driven south of the Pyrenees by the 
kings of the Franks, but held their possessions in Spain until 
the beginning of the eighth century, when their rule was brought 
to an end by the Saracens (sect. 64). When thus overturned the 
Visigothic kingdom had lasted nearly three hundred years. Dur- 
ing this time the conquerors had mingled with the old Romanized 
inhabitants of Spain, so that in the veins of the Spaniard of to-day 
is blended the blood of Iberian, Celt, Roman, and Teuton, to- 
gether with that of the last intruder, the African Moor. 




§ 10] KINGDOM OF THE VANDALS 9 

10. Kingdom of the Vandals (a.d. 439-533). About half 
a century before the fall of Rome the Vandals set up a kingdom 
in North Africa. These barbarians were animated by a more 
destructive energy than any other of the Teutonic tribes that 
took part in the subversion of the Roman Empire. Their very 
name has passed into all languages as the synonym of wanton 
destruction and violence. The terror of this name they spread 
throughout the INIediterranean lands. In another connection we 
have told how the Vandal king, Geiseric, bore in triumph down 
the Tiber the heavy spoils of Rome itself.^ 

Being Arian- Christians, the Vandals persecuted with furious 
zeal the orthodox party, the followers. of Athanasius. Moved by 
the, entreaties of the African Catholics, the Eastern Emperor 
Justinian sent his general Belisarius to drive the barbarians from 
Africa. The expedition was successful, and Carthage and the 
fruitful fields of Africa were restored to the Empire after having 
suffered the insolence of the barbarian conquerors for the space 
of above a hundred years. The Vandals remaining in the country 
were gradually absorbed by the old Roman population, and 
after a few generations no certain trace of the barbarian invaders 
could be detected in the physical appearance, the language, or 
the customs of the inhabitants of the African coast. The Vandal 
nation had disappeared; the name alone remained. 

11. The Franks under the Merovingians (a.d. 486-752). 
The Franks, who were destined to give a new name to Gaul 
and form the nucleus of the French nation, made their first set- 
tlements west of the Rhine about two hundred years before the 
fall of Rome. Among their several chieftains at the time of 
this event was Clovis. Upon the break-up of the Roman Em- 
pire in the West, Clovis conceived the ambition of erecting a 
kingdom upon the ruins of the Roman power. He attacked 
Syagrius, the Roman governor of a district in northern Gaul still 
independent of the barbarians, and at Soissons gained a decisive 
victory over his forces (a.d. 486). Thus was destroyed forever 
the last remnant in Gaul of that Roman authority which had 

1 Ancient History, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 546. 2 ibid. sect. 527. 



lo THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS [§ 12 

been established among its barbarian tribes more than five cen- 
turies before by the conquests of Julius Caesar that carried the 
Roman power beyond the Alps. 

Clovis in a short time extended his authority over the greater 
part of Gaul, reducing to the condition of tributaries the various 
Teutonic tribes that had taken possession of different portions 
of the country. Upon his death (a.d. 511) his extensive domin- 
ions, in accordance with the ancient Teutonic law of inheritance, 
were divided among his four sons. About a century and a half 
of discord followed, by the end of which time the Merovingians^ 
had become so feeble and inefficient that they were contemp- 
tuously called rots faineants, or " do-nothing kings," and an 
ambitious officer of the crown, known as Mayor of the Palace, 
in a way that will be explained a little later (sect. 71), pushed 
aside the weak Merovingian king and gave to the Prankish mon- 
archy a new royal line, — the Carolingian. 

12. Kingdom of the Lombards (a.d. 568-774). Barely a 
decade had passed after the recovery of Italy from the Ostro- 
goths by the Eastern Emperor Justinian (sect. 8), before a large 
part of the peninsula was again lost to the Empire through its 
conquest by another barbarian tribe known as the Lombards. 
When they entered Italy the Lombards were Christians of the 
Arian sect; but in time they became converts to the orthodox 
faith, and Pope Gregory I bestowed upon their king a diadem 
which came to be known as the "Iron Crown," for the reason 
that there was wrought into it what was believed to be one of 
the nails of the cross upon which Christ had suffered. 

The kingdom of the Lombards was destroyed by Charlemagne, 
the most noted of the Prankish rulers, in the year 774; but the 
blood of the invaders had by this time become intermingled 
with that of the former subjects of the Empire, so that throughout 
all that part of the peninsula which is still called Lombardy after 
them one will to-day occasionally see the fair hair and light com- 
plexion which reveal the strain of Teutonic blood in the veins of 
the present inhabitants. 

1 So called from Merowig, an early chieftain of the race. 



§ 13] ANGLO-SAXON CONQUEST OF BRITAIN 



II 



One important result of the Lombard conquest of Italy was 
the destruction of the political unity established by the Romans 
and the breaking up of the country into a multitude of petty 
states. This resulted from the incomplete nature of the conquest 
and from the loose feudal constitution of the Lombard monarchy, 
which was rather a group of virtually independent duchies than 
a real kingdom. Not 
until our own day 
did there finally 
emerge from this 
political chaos a 
united Italy/ 

13. The Anglo- 
Saxon Conquest 
of Britain. In the 
fifth century of our 
era, being then en- 
gaged in her death 
struggle with the 
barbarians, Rome 
withdrew her legions 
from Britain in 
order to protect 
Italy. Thus that 
province was left 
exposed especially 
to the depredations 
of the Anglo-Saxon 
corsairs from the Continent. In their extremity the provincials 
are said to have appealed for aid to the Roman governor of Gaul, 
picturing, in a supplication known as "The Groans of the 
Britains," their condition in these terms: '^The barbarians drive 
us into the sea ; the sea throws us back upon the swords of the 
barbarians; and we have only the hard choice of perishing by 
the sword or by the waves." The appeal, if ever made, was 

1 See accompanying map and explanatory note. 




Map of Italy uxder the Lombards 

Showing how the political unity of the peninsula was shat- 
tered by the Lombard conquest. The unshaded portions 
represent the regions taken possession of by the barbarians ; 
the shaded areas indicate the lands which remained in the 
hands of the Eastern Emperor 



12 THE BARBARIAN KINGDOMS [§14 

unavailing, for the Roman legions were just then battUng with the 
terrible hordes of Alaric and Attila, and could extend no help. 

Left to themselves the Britons made heroic resistance against 
the invaders. So bitter was the struggle that the provincials 
were either exterminated, reduced to serfdom, or driven bodily 
westward. Almost every trace of Roman civilization, together 
with the Christian religion, which had been introduced during the 
Roman rule, was virtually swept away. It is to this period of 
desperate struggle that the famous King Arthur belongs. The 
legends that have gathered about the name of this national hero 
are mostly mythical; yet it is possible that he had a real exist- 
ence and that the name represents one or more of the most 
valiant of the Celtic chiefs who battled so long and heroically 
against the pagan invaders.^ 

The conquerors of Britain belonged to three Teutonic tribes, 
— ^the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes, — but among the Celts they all 
passed under the name of Saxons, and among themselves, after 
they began to draw together into a single nation, under that of 
Angles, whence the name England (Angle-land). 

By the close of the sixth century the invading bands had set 
up in the conquered parts of the island eight or nine, or perhaps 
more, kingdoms, — frequently designated, though somewhat inac- 
curately, as the Heptarchy. For the space of two hundred years 
there was an almost perpetual strife for supremacy among the 
leading states. Finally, Egbert, king of Wessex (a. d. 802-839), 
brought all the other kingdoms to a subject or tributary condi- 
tion, and became in reality, though he seems never, save on one 
occasion, to have actually assumed the title, the first king of 
England. 

14. Teutonic Tribes outside the Empire. We have now 
spoken of the most important of the Teutonic tribes which forced 
themselves within the limits of the Roman Empire in the West, 
and that there, upon the ruins of the civilization they had over- 
thrown, laid or helped to lay the foundations of the modern 

1 Many of the hard-pressed Britons fled across the English Channel to the adjacent 
shores of France, and gave name to the French province of Brittany. 



§ 14] TEUTONS OUTSIDE THE EMPIRE 13 

nations of Italy, Spain, France, and England. Beyond the 
boundaries of the old Empire were still other tribes and clans of 
this same mighty family of nations, — tribes and clans that were 
destined to play great parts in European history. 

On the east, beyond the Rhine, were the ancestors of the 
modern Germans. Notwithstanding the immense hosts that the 
forests and morasses of Germany had poured into the Roman 
provinces, the western portions of the land, in the sixth century 
of our era, seemed still as crowded as before the great migration 
began.^ These tribes were yet barbarians in manners and, for 
the most part, pagans in religion. In the northwest of Europe 
were the Scandinavians, the ancestors of the modern Danes, 
Swedes, and Norwegians. They were as yet untouched either by 
the civilization or the religion of Rome. 

Selections from the Sources. The Letters o/Cassiodoms (Thomas Hodgkin's 
trans.), bk. i, letters 24, 35 ; bk. ii, letters 32, 34; bk. iii, letters 17, 19, 29, 31, 
43; bk. xi, letters 12, 13; bk. xii, letter 20. (These letters are invaluable in 
showing what was the general condition of things in the transition period 
between ancient and mediaeval times.) 

References (Modern). Hodgkin, T., Italy and her Invaders and Theodoric 
the Goth (Hodgkin is recognized as the best authority on the period of the 
migration). Villari, P., The Barbarian Ijtvasiofts 0/ Italy. Gummere, F. B., 
Germanic Origins (an authoritative and interesting work on the early culture 
of the Germans). Gibbon, E., chaps, xxxviii, xxxix. Church, R. W., The 
Beginning of the Middle Ages, chaps, i-v. Emerton, E., A71 Introduction to 
the Study of the Middle Ages, chaps, vi, vii. The Cambridge Medieval Ilistoiy, 
vol. i, chap. XV ; vol. ii. chaps, iv-vii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Life and work of Cassiodorus ; his state 
papers: Hodgkin, T., Theodoric, chap, ix, pp. 160-173. -• The German con- 
quest of Gaul : Adams, G. B., The Growth of the French Nation, chap. ii. 

1 The Slavs had pushed into the eastern parts of Germany. 



CHAPTER III 

THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS 

I. THE CONVERSION OF THE BARBARIANS 

15. How Christianity tempered the Barbarian Conquests. 

The most ipiportant event in the history of the tribes that took 
possession of the Roman Empire in the West was their conversion 
to Christianity. Many of the barbarians were converted before 
or soon after their entrance into the Empire ; to this circumstance 
the Roman provinces owed their immunity from the excessive 
cruelties which pagan barbarians seldom fail to inflict upon a 
subjected enemy. Alaric left untouched the treasures of the 
churches of the Roman Christians because his own faith was also 
Christian. For like reason the Vandal king Geiseric yielded to 
the prayers of Pope Leo the Great and promised to leave to the 
inhabitants of the imperial city their lives.^ The more tolerable 
fate of Italy, Spain, and Gaul, as compared with the hard fate 
of Britain, is owing, in part at least, to the fact that the tribes 
which overran those countries had become in the main converts 
to Christianity before they crossed the boundaries of the Empire, 
while the Angles and Saxons when they entered Britain were still 
untamed pagans. 

16. Conversion of the Goths, Vandals, and Other Tribes. 
The first converts to Christianity among the barbarians beyond 
the limits of the Empire were won from among the Goths. Fore- 
most of the apostles that arose among them was Ulfilas, who trans- 
lated the Scriptures into the Gothic language, omitting from his 
version, however, the Books of the Kings, as he feared that the 
stirring recital of wars and battles in that portion of the Word 
might kindle into too fierce a flame the martial ardor of his new 
converts. 

1 See Ancient History, ad Rev. Ed., sects. 540, 546. 
14 



§17] CONVERSION OF THE FRANKS 15 

What happened in the case of the Goths happened also in the 
case of most of the barbarian tribes that participated in the over- 
throw of the Roman Empire in the West. By the time of the fall 
of Rome the Goths, the Vandals, the Suevi, and the Burgundians 
had become proselytes to Christianity. They, however, professed 
the Arian creed, which had been condemned by the great council 
of the Church held at Nicaea during the reign of Constantine the 
Great. Hence they were regarded as heretics by the Roman 
Catholic Church, and all had to be reconverted to the orthodox 
creed, which good work was gradually accomplished. 

The remaining Teutonic tribes of whose conversion we shall 
speak — the Franks, the Anglo-Saxons, and the chief tribes of 
Germany — embraced at the outset the Roman Catholic faith. 

17. Conversion of the Franks; Importance of this Event. 
The Franks when they entered the Empire, like the Angles and 
Saxons when they landed in Britain, were still pagans. Christianity 
gained way very slowly among them until a supposed interposition 
by the Christian God in their behalf led the king and nation to 
adopt the new religion in place of their old faith. The circum- 
stances, as reported by tradition, were these. In a terrible battle 
between the Alemanni and the Franks under their king Clovis, the 
situation of the Franks had become desperate. Then Clovis, fall- 
ing upon his knees, called upon the God of the Christians and 
vowed that if he would give him the victory he would become his 
follower. The battle turned in favor of the Franks, and Clovis, 
faithful to his vow, was baptized and with him three thousand of 
his warriors. 

This story of the conversion of Clovis and his Franks illustrates 
how the belief of the barbarians in omens and divine interposi- 
tions, and particularly their feeling that if their gods did not do 
for them all they wanted done they had a right to set them aside 
and choose others in their stead, contributed to their conversion, 
and how the reception of the new faith was often a tribal or 
national affair rather than a matter of personal conviction. 

"The conversion of the Franks," says the historian Milman, 
''was the most important event in its remote as well as its 



i6 



THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS 



[§ IS 



immediate consequences in European history." It was of such 
moment for the reason that the Franks embraced the orthodox 
Roman Catholic faith, while almost all the other Teutonic invaders 
of the Empire had embraced the heretical Arian creed. This 
secured them the loyalty of their Roman subjects and also gained 
for them the official favor of the Church of Rome. Thus was laid 
the basis of the ascendancy in the West of the Prankish kings. 

18. Augustine's Mission to England. In the year a.d. 596 
Pope Gregory I, "who alone among men has received, by universal 

consent, the double 







Fig. 2. St. Martin's Church, Canter- 
bury. (From a photograph) 

' This church occupies the site of a chapel built in the 

Roman period and standing at the time of the landing 

of the monk Augustine, in the year 597. Its walls show 

some of the Roman bricks of the original church 



surname of Saint and 
Great," sent the monk 
Augustine with a band 
of forty companions to 
teach the Christian faith 
in Britain, in whose 
people he had become 
interested through see- 
ing in the slave market 
at Rome some fair- 
faced captives from 
that remote region. 

The monks were fa- 
vorably received by the 
English, who listened attentively to the story the strangers had 
come to tell them; and being persuaded that the tidings were 
true, they burned the temples of Woden and Thor, and were in 
large numbers baptized in the Christian faith. 

One of the most important consequences of the conversion of 
Britain was the reestablishment of that connection of the island 
with Roman civilization which had been severed by the calami- 
ties of the fifth century. As the historian Green says, — he is 
speaking of the embassy of St. Augustine, — "The march of the 
monks as they chanted their solemn litany was in one sense 
a return of the Roman legions who withdrew at the trumpet 
call of Alaric. . . . Practically Augustine's landing renewed that 




§19] CONVERSION OF IRELAND 17 

union with the western world which the landing of Hengist had 
destroyed. The new England was admitted into the older 
commonwealth of nations. The civilization, art, letters, which 
had fled before the sword of the English conquerors, returned 
with the Christian faith." 

19. The Conversion of Ireland. The spiritual conquest of 
Ireland was effected largely by a zealous priest named Patricius 
(died about a.d. 469), better known as St. Patrick, the patron 

saint of Ireland. • 

With such success ^ '" - 

were his labors at- '^- ^ f ^ 

tended that by the -: -?^^^.^C,i!' m^ 
time of his death a " . 7^^ " ':^^aF^^^^^« 

great part of the _ ^^_^_ ~Mc^ 

island had em- 
braced the Chris- Fig. 3. The Ruins of Iona. (After an 
tian faith. Never old drawing) 

did any race re- That man is little to be envied whose patriotism would 
ppi'vp the Cosnel ^^^ »'>'" force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety 
would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona. — Dr. 
with more ardent Johnson, a Joimiey to me Western Isles of Scotland 

enthusiasm. The 

Irish or Celtic Church sent out its devoted missionaries into the 
Pictish highlands, into the forests of Germany, and into the 
wilds of Alps and Apennines.^ 

Among the numerous religious houses founded by the Celtic 
missionaries was the famous monastery established a.d. 563 by 
the Irish monk St. Columba, on the little isle of Iona, just off 
the Pictish coast. Iona became a most renowned center of 
Christian learning and missionary zeal, and for almost two cen- 
turies was the point from which radiated light through the 



1 These Irish missionaries were not merely the representatives of Christianity. 
" They were instructors in every known branch of science and learning of the time, 
possessors and bearers of a higher culture than was at that period to be found any- 
where on the Continent, and can surely claim to have been the pioneers, — to have laid 
the comer stone of western culture on the Continent, the rich results of which Germany 
shares and enjoys to-day, in common with all other civilized nations." — Zimmer, The 
Irish Elemetii in MedieBval Culture, p. 130 



1 8 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§20 

darkness of the surrounding heathenism. Fitly has it been 
called the Nursery of Saints and the Oracle of the West,^ 

20. Rivalry between the Roman and the Celtic Church; the 
Council of Whitby (a.d. 664). From the very moment that 
Augustine touched the shores of Britain and summoned the 
Welsh clergy to acknowledge the discipline of the Roman Church, 
there had been a growing jealousy between the Latin and Celtic 
churches, which had now risen into the bitterest rivalry and 
strife. So long had the Celtic Church been cut off from all rela- 
tions with Rome, that it had come to differ somewhat from it in 
the matter of certain ceremonies and observances, such as the 
time of keeping Easter and the form of the tonsure." 

With a view to settling the quarrel, Oswy, king of Northumbria, 
who thought that "as they all expected the same kingdom of 
heaven, so they ought not to differ in the celebration of the 
divine mysteries," called a synod composed of representatives of 
both parties, at the monastery of Whitby. The chief question 
of debate, which was argued before the king by the ablest advo- 
cates of both churches, was the proper time for the observance 
of Easter. The debate was warm, and hot words were exchanged. 
Finally, Wilfrid, the speaker for the Roman party, happening 
to quote the words of Christ to Peter, "To thee will I give the 
keys of the kingdom of heaven," the king asked the Celtic monks 
if these words were really spoken by Christ to that apostle, and 
upon their admitting that they were, Oswy said: "He being the 
doorkeeper, ... I will in all things obey his decrees, lest when 
I come to the gates of the kingdom of heaven, there should be 
none to open them." 

The decision of the prudent Oswy gave the British Isles to 
Rome; for not only was all England soon won to the Roman 
side, but the churches and monasteries of Wales and Ireland and 
Scotland came in time to conform to the Roman standard and 

1 In southern Germany (now Switzerland) the Irish monk Galkis established 
(a.d. 613) the celebrated monastery of St. Gall, which at a later time became one of the 
chief seats of learning in central Europe. 

2 In the Roman tonsure the top of the head was shaven, in the Celtic the front 
part only. 



§21] EARLY ANGLO-SAXON LITERATURE 19 

custom. "By the assistance of our Lord," says the pious Latin 
chronicler, "the monks were brought to the canonical observation 
of Easter and the right mode of the tonsure." 

One important result of the Roman victory was the hastening 
of the political unity of England through its ecclesiastical unity. 
The Celtic Church, in marked contrast with the Latin, was utterly 
devoid of capacity for organization. It could have done nothing 
in the way of developing among the several Anglo-Saxon states 
the sentiment of nationality. On the other hand, the Roman 
Church, through the exercise of a central authority, through 
national synods and general legislation, overcame the isolation 
of the different kingdoms and helped powerfully to draw them 
together into a common political life. 

21. Pagan and Christian Literature of the Anglo-Saxons. 
A strong side light is cast upon our ancestors' change of religion 
by two famous poems which date from the Anglo-Saxon period of 
our literature. One of these, called Beoivulj, was composed 
while our forefathers were yet pagans, and probably before 
they left the Continent ; the other, known as the Paraphrase 
of the Scriptures, was written soon after their conversion to 
Christianity. 

Beowulf is an epic poem which tells of the exploits of an 
heroic Viking, Beowulf by name, who delivers the people from a 
terrible monster that feasted upon sleeping men. It is alive 
with the instincts of paganism, and is a faithful reflection of the 
rough heathen times in which it had birth. Every passage dis- 
plays the love of the savage for coarse horrors and brutal slaugh- 
ters. Thus it runs : " The wretched wight seized quickly a 
sleeping warrior, slit him unawares, bit his bone-locker, drank his 
blood, in morsels swallowed him; soon had he all eaten, feet 
and fingers." Before another can be made a victim Beowulf 
closes with the monster. "The hall thundered, the ale of all the 
Danes and earls was spilt. Angry, fierce were the strong fighters, 
the hall was full of din. It was great wonder that the wine-hall 
stood above the warlike beasts, that the fair earth-house fell not 
to the ground; but it was too fast in iron bands." Such was the 



20 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§ 22 

gleeman's song which delighted our Saxon forefathers as they 
drank and caroused in their great mead halls. 

In striking contrast with the pagan hero poem stands the 
Paraphrase, the first fruits in English literature of the mission 
of Augustine. This consists of Bible stories retold in verse. 
These metrical paraphrases, it is now believed, were composed, in 
the main, between the seventh and the tenth century by different 
poets, who seem to have been disciples or imitators of a certain 
monk of Whitby, named Caedmon, upon whom, according to a 
beautiful legend transmitted to us by the Venerable Bede,^ the 
gift of song had been miraculously bestowed, and who, though he 
could neither read nor write, turned into sweet verses, as they 
were recited to him, many of the graphic tales of Holy Writ. In 
these compositions is reflected in a wonderful manner the revolu- 
tion in thought and feeling and in aim and purpose of life which 
the reception of Christian teachings and doctrines, in place of 
their earlier beliefs and ideas, wrought in the pagan conquerors 
of Britain. 

The Paraphrase reminds us of Milton's Paradise Lost (written 
a thousand years later), and pursues very much the same order 
in the treatment of its lofty theme. Hence Caedmon is sometimes 
called the "Saxon Milton." His poem was multiplied in manu- 
script copies, and for five centuries was read by all classes of 
English society, being given an honored place alongside the 
Bible itself. 

22. The Conversion of Germany, The conversion of the 
tribes of Germany was effected by Celtic, Anglo-Saxon, and Prank- 
ish missionaries, and the sword of Charlemagne (sect. 73). The 
great apostle of Germany was the Saxon Winfrid, better known 
as St. Boniface. During a long and intensely active life he 
founded schools and monasteries, organized churches, preached and 

1 Bede the Venerable (about a.d. 673-735) was a pious and learned Northumbrian 
monk, who wrote, among other works, an invaluable one entitled Historia Ei-clcsias/ica 
Gcntis Anglorwn, "The Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation." The work 
recites, as its central theme, the story of how our forefathers were won to the 
Christian faith. We are indebted to Bede for a large part of our knowledge of early 
England. 



§ 23] CONVERSION OF RUSSIA 2 1 

baptized, and at last died a martyr's death (a.d. 753). Through 
him, as says Milman, the Saxon invasion of England flowed back 
upon the Continent. 

The Christianizing of the tribes of Germany relieved the Teu- 
tonic folk of western Europe from the constant peril of massacre 
by their heathen kinsmen, and erected a strong barrier in central 
Europe against the advance of the waves of Turanian paganism 
and INIohammedanism which for centuries beat so threateningly 
against the eastern frontiers of Germany. 

23. The Conversion of Russia. Vladimir the Great (d. 1015) 
was the Clovis of Russia. This ruler, according to the account 
of the matter that has come down to us, having had urged upon 
his attention the claims of different religions, sent out envoys to 
make investigation respecting the relative merits of Mohamme- 
danism, the Jewish religion, and Latin and Greek Christianity. 
The commissioners reported in favor of the religion of Constan- 
tinople, having been brought to this mind by what seemed to 
them the supernatural splendors of the ceremonials that they 
had witnessed in the great Church of St. Sophia. 

Vladimir caused the great wooden idol of the chief god of his 
people to be hurled into the Dnieper and his subjects to be bap- 
tized in its waters by the Christian priests. This act of Vladimir 
marks the real beginning of the evangelization of Russia (988). 

That the chief Slavic tribes should have come under the re- 
ligious influence of Constantinople instead of under that of Rome 
had far-reaching consequences for Russian history. This circum- 
stance cut off Russia from sympathy with the Roman Catholic 
West and shut her out from all the civilizing influences that 
accompanied Latin Christianity.^ 

24. Christianity in the North. The progress of Christianity in 
the North was slow; but gradually, during the ninth, tenth, 
and eleventh centuries, the missionaries of the Church won over 
all the Scandinavian peoples. One important effect of their 

1 The Slavic Poles came ultimately under the influence of Rome, and it was this 
circumstance that helped greatly to draw Poland into the current of the life of western 
Europe. 



2 2 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§25 

conversion was the checking of those piratical expeditions which 
during all the centuries of their pagan history had been constantly 
putting out from the fiords of the northern peninsulas and vexing 
every shore to the south. 

By about the year looo all Europe was claimed by Christianity, 
save the regions of the northwest about the Baltic, which were 
inhabited chiefly by the still pagan Finns and Lapps, parts of 
the Slavic lands, and the larger portion of the Iberian penin- 
sula, which was in the hands of the Mohammedan Moors. 

25. Reaction of Paganism on Christianity. Thus were the 
conquerors of the Empire met and conquered by Christianity. 
The victory, it must be confessed, was in a great degree a victory 
rather in name than in fact. The Church could not all at once 
leaven the great mass of heathenism which had so suddenly been 
brought within its fold. For a long time after they were called 
Christians, the barbarians, coarse and cruel and self-willed and 
superstitious as they were, understood very little of the doctrines 
and exhibited still less of the true spirit of the religion they pro- 
fessed. To this depressing reaction of Teutonic barbarism upon 
the Church is without doubt to be attributed in large measure the 
deplorable moral state of Europe during so large a part of the 
medise.val ages. 

II. THE RISE OF MONASTICISM 

26. Monasticism defined. It was during the period between 
the third and the sixth century that there grew up in the Church 
the institution known as Monasticism. This was so remarkable 
a system, and one that exerted so profound an influence upon 
mediaeval and even later history, that we must here acquaint 
ourselves with at least its spirit and aims. 

The term Monasticism, in its widest application, denotes a 
life of austere self-denial and of seclusion from the world, with 
the object of promoting the interests of the soul. As thus defined, 
the system embraced two prominent classes of ascetics: (i) her- 
mits, or anchorites, — persons who, retiring from the world, lived 



§ 27] GROWTH OF MONASTICISM 23 

solitary lives in desolate places; (2) cenobites, or monks, who 
formed communities and lived usually under a common roof. 

27. Circumstances and Doctrines that fostered the Growth 
of Monasticism. The development of Christian monasticism^ 
was fostered by many influences, and particularly by the social 
and moral decadence that marked the civilization of the later 
Roman Empire. Never, perhaps, was the moral and spiritual life 
of the ancient work at a lower ebb than at this time. Nor had 
the Church escaped the moral contagion. It had in a lamentable 
degree become conformed unto the world. 

This state of things awakened a fierce protest in the souls of 
the more spiritually minded, and created in them a longing 
for a higher ideal and a more worthy religious life. Such 
persons naturally embraced with enthusiasm the ascetic ideal, 
which was in every respect in direct opposition to the prevail- 
ing conceptions and practices of society. In the face of un- 
bridled licentiousness, the monks proclaimed the peculiar sanctity 
of the celibate life. In the face of covetousness and avarice, they 
preached the absolute worthlessness of all earthly possessions 
and exalted poverty into a virtue. To those who were pampering 
their bodies in the luxurious baths, and making them effeminate 
and soft with perfumes and unguents, they, careless of the body, 
proclaimed the superiority of a clean soul. In opposition to the 
gluttony of the rich, the monks prescribed a diet of herbs and 
coarse bread; in the place of rich apparel, they clothed them- 
selves in sackcloth and garments of hair. In this opposition of 
the ascetic ideal to the prevailing life and conduct of men, we see 
in what measure asceticism was a recoil from a social system 
which, denying the rightful supremacy of the soul over the 
body, marred the beauty and destroyed the dignity of life. 

While the moral and social condition of the Grseco-Roman 
world thus favored the development of the monastic system, 

1 The ascetic ideal of life was by no means original with Christianity. Brahmanism 
has always had its ascetics and hermits. All Buddhistic lands are to-day filled with 
monasteries and monks. About the time of Christ there were to be found in Syria 
among the Jews the Essenes, a sect of religious enthusiasts whose members led a solitary 
and ascetic life. 



24 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§ 28 

certain Christian teachings drawn from various texts of the 
Bible tended in the same direction. Thus the Apostle Paul had 
said, ''He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to 
the Lord; . . . but he that is married careth for the things that 
are of the world." ^ And Christ himself had declared, " If any man 
come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and 
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he 
cannot be my disciple";- and, again, he had said to the rich 
young man, "If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, 
and give to the poor."^ These passages, and others like them 
taken literally, tended greatly to confirm the belief of the ascetic 
that his life of isolation and poverty and abstinence was the most 
perfect life and the surest way to win salvation. 

28. St. Anthony, "the Father of the Hermits." St. Anthony 
an Egyptian ascetic (b. about a.d. 251), who by example and 
influence gave a tremendous impulse to the movement, is called 
the "Father of the Hermits." The romance of his life, written 
by the celebrated Athanasius, stirred the whole Christian world 
and led thousands to renounce society and in imitation, of the 
saint to flee to the desert. It is estimated that before the close 
of the fourth century the population of the desert in many dis- 
tricts in Egypt was equal to that of the cities. 

Most renowned of all the anchorites of the East was St. Simeon 
Stylites, the Saint of the Pillar (d. a.d. 459), who spent thirty-six 
years on a column only three feet in diameter at the top, which he 
had gradually raised to a height of over fifty feet.* 

29. Monasticism in the West. During the fourth century 
the anchorite type of asceticism, which was favored by the mild 
climate of the Eastern lands and especially by that of Egypt, 
assumed in some degree the monastic form; that is to say, the 
fame of this or that anchorite or hermit drew about him a number 
of disciples, whose rude huts or cells formed what was known as 
a laura, the nucleus of a monastery. 

Soon after the cenobite system had been established in the East 

^ I Cor. vii. 32, 2^. 3 Matt. xix. 21. 

2 Luke xiv. 26. 4 Read Tennyson's poem " St. Simeon Stylites." 



§30] 



THE RULE OF ST. BENEDICT 



25 



it was introduced into Europe, and in an astonishingly short space 
of time spread throughout all the Western countries where Chris- 
tianity had gained a foothold. Here it prevailed to the almost 
total exclusion of the hermit mode of life. Monasteries arose on 
every side. The number that fled to these retreats was vastly 
augmented by the disorder and terror attending the invasion of 
the barbarians and 
the overthrow of the 
Empire in the West. 
The movement drew 
within the circle of 
its influence women 
as well as men, 
and nunneries were 
founded in great 
numbers, which were 
subject to a disci- 
pline similar to that 
of the monasteries. 

30. The Rule of 
St. Benedict. With 
a view to introduc- 
ing some sort of 
regularity into the 
practices and auster- 
ities of the monks, 
rules were early 
prescribed for their observance. The three essential requirements 
or vows of the monk were poverty, chastity, and obedience. 

The greatest legislator of the monks was St. Benedict of Nursia 
(a.d. 480-543), the founder of the celebrated monastery of Monte 
Cassino, situated midway between Rome and Naples in Italy. 
His code was to the religious world what the Corpus Juris Civilis 
of Justinian (sect. 50) was to the lay society of Europe. Many of 
his rules were most wise and practical, as, for instance, one that 
made manual work a pious duty, and another that required the 




Fig. 4. The Simopetra Monastery of 
Mt. Athos. (From a photograph) 

The convents of Mt. Athos in their present state give us 

a very accurate notion of the great monasteries of Europe, 

at the close of the twelfth century. — Sabatier, Li/c of 

St. Fraticis of Assist 



2 6 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§31 

monk to spend an allotted time daily in sacred reading. The 
monks who subjected themselves to the Rule of St. Benedict were 
known as Benedictines. The Order became immensely popular. 
At one time it embraced about forty thousand abbeys. From its 
ranks came twenty-four popes, and saints without number. 

31. Monastic Reforms; Cluny. Monasticism as an active and 
potent force in the history of the West has a long and wonderful 
history of more than a thousand years. This history presents 
one dominant fact, — ^ ever-renewed reform movements in the mon- 
asteries. Scarcely was a monastery or a monastic order established 
before the acquisition of wealth brought in self-indulgence and 
laxity of discipline. But there was always among the backsliding 
dwellers in the cloisters a "saving remnant," and upon these 
choice souls the spirit of reform was sure to descend, and thus it 
happens that with the reform movements marking the history of 
the monks are associated the names of many of the purest and 
most exalted characters of the mediaeval ages. 

Among the earliest and most noteworthy of these reform move- 
ments was that which resulted in the founding in the year 910 of 
the celebrated monastery of Cluny in Burgundy. The influences 
which radiated from the cloisters of Cluny left a deep impression 
upon more than two centuries of history. 

32. Services of the Monks to Civilization. The early estab- 
lishment of the monastic system in the Church resulted in great 
advantages to the new world that was shaping itself out of the 
ruins of the old. The monks, especially the Benedictines, became 
agriculturists (the plough as well as the cross was an ensign of the 
monks), and by patient labor converted the wild and marshy 
lands which they received as gifts from princes and others into 
fruitful fields, thus redeeming from barrenness some of the most 
desolate districts of Europe. 

The monks also became missionaries, and it was largely to their 
zeal and devotion that the Church owed her speedy and signal 
victory over the barbarians. It is about the names of such de- 
voted monks as Saints Columba, Callus, and Boniface that gathers 
much of the romance of the missions of the mediaeval Church. 



§32] 



SERVICES OF THE IMONKS 



27 



The quiet air of the monasteries nourished learning as well as 
piety. The monks became teachers, and under the shelter of the 
monasteries established schools which were the nurseries of learn- 
ing during the earlier Middle Ages and the homes for centuries of 
the best intellectual life of Europe. 

The monks also became copyists, and with great painstaking and 
industry gathered and multiplied ancient manuscripts, and thus 
preserved and transmitted to the modern world much classical 
learning and literature that 



would otherwise have been lost. 
Almost all the remains of the 
Greek and Latin classics that we 
possess have come to us through 
the agency of the monks. 

The monks also became the 
chroniclers of the events of their 
own times, so it is to them that 
we are indebted for a large and 
important part of our knowl- 
edge of the life and happenings 
of the early mediaeval centuries. 
Thus the scriptorium, or writing 
room of the monastery, filled 
that the great publishing house fills in the modern world. 

The monks became further the almoners of the pious and the 
wealthy, and distributed alms to the poor and needy. Everywhere 
the monasteries opened their hospitable doors to the weary, the 
sick, and the discouraged. In a word, these retreats were the inns, 
the asylums, and the hospitals of the mediaeval ages. This 
spirit of helpfulness and charity found its embodiment in the 
women who became nuns. To a woman is to be attributed the 
establishment of the first Christian hospital.^ 




Fig. 5. A Monk Copyist. (From a 
manuscript of the fifteenth century) 

the place in mediaeval society 



1 A Roman lady, named Fabiola, in the fourth century founded at Rome, as an act 
of penance, the first public hospital, and the charity planted by that woman's hand 
overspread the world, and will alleviate, to the end of time, the darkest anguish of 
humanity. — Lecky, Hisioiy of European Morals, vol. ii, p. So 



28 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§33 

III. THE RISE OF THE PAPACY 

33. The Empire within the Empire. Long before the fall of 
Rome there had begun to grow up within the Roman Empire an 
ecclesiastical state, which in its constitution and its administrative 
system was shaping itself upon the imperial model. This spiritual 
empire, like the secular empire, possessed a hierarchy of officers, 
of which deacons, priests or presbyters, and bishops were the 
most important. The bishops collectively formed what is known 
as the episcopate. There were four grades of bishops, namely, 
country bishops, city bishops, metropolitans (or archbishops), and 
patriarchs. At the end of the fourth century there were five 
patriarchates, that is, regions ruled by patriarchs. These centered 
in the great cities of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, 
and Jerusalem. 

Among the patriarchs, the patriarchs of Rome were accorded 
almost universally a precedence in honor and dignity. They 
claimed further a precedence in authority and jurisdiction, and 
this was already very widely recognized. Before the close of the 
eighth century there was firmly established over a great part of 
Christendom what we may call an ecclesiastical monarchy. 

Besides the influence of great men — such as Leo the Great, 
Gregory the Great, and Nicholas I — who held the seat of St. 
Peter, there were various historical circumstances that contributed 
to the realization by the Roman bishops of their claim to 
supremacy and greatly aided them in establishing the almost 
universal authority of the See of Rome. In the following sections 
we shall enumerate several of these favoring circumstances. 
These matters constitute the great landmarks in the rise and early 
growth of the Papacy. 

34. The Belief in the Primacy of St. Peter and in the 
Founding by him of the Church at Rome. The Roman 
Catholic Church teaches that the apostle Peter was given by the 
Master primacy among his fellow apostles and, furthermore, that 
Christ intrusted that disciple with the keys of the kingdom of 
heaven and invested him with superlative authority as teacher 



§35] ADVANTAGE OF POSITION AT ROME 29 

and interpreter of the Word by the commission, " Feed my sheep; 
. . . feed my lambs," thus giving into his charge the entire 
flock of the Church. It also teaches that the apostle Peter himself 
founded the church at Rome, and suffered martyrdom there under 
the Emperor Nero. 

These beliefs and interpretations of history, which make the 
Roman bishops the successors of the first of the apostles and the 
holders of his seat, contributed largely, of course, to enhance their 
r^utation and to justify their claim to a primacy of authority 
over all the dignitaries of the Church. 

35. Advantages of their Position at the Political Center of 
the World. The claims of the Roman bishops were in the early 
centuries greatly favored by the spell in which the world was held 
by the name and prestige of imperial Rome. Thence it had been 
accustomed to receive commands in all temporal matters; how 
very natural, then, that thither it should turn for command and 
guidance in spiritual affairs. The Roman bishops in thus occupy- 
ing the geographical and political center of the world enjoyed a 
position of preeminence over all other bishops and patriarchs. 
The halo that during many centuries of wonderful history had 
gathered about the Eternal City came naturally to invest with a 
kind of aureole the head of the Christian bishop. 

36. Effect of the Removal of the Imperial Government to 
Constantinople. Nor was this advantage that was given the 
Roman bishops by their position at Rome lost when the old capital 
ceased to be an imperial city. The removal, by the acts of Dio- 
cletian and Constantine, of the chief seat of the government to 
the East, instead of diminishing the power and dignity of the 
Roman bishops, tended greatly to promote their claims and 
authority. It left the pontiff the foremost personage in Rome. 

37. The Pastor as Protector of Rome. With the advent of 
the barbarians there came another occasion for the Roman 
bishops to widen their influence and enhance their authority. 
Rome's extremity was their opportunity. Thus it will be recafled 
how mainly through the intercession of the pious Pope Leo the 
Great the fierce Attila was persuaded to turn back and spare the 



30 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§ 38 

imperial city/ and how the same bishop, in the year a.d. 455, 
also appeased in a measure the wrath of the Vandal Geiseric and 
shielded the inhabitants from the worst passions of a barbarian 
soldiery .- 

Thus when the emperors, the natural defenders of the capital, 
were unable to protect it, the unarmed pastor was able, through 
the awe and reverence inspired by his holy office, to render 
services that could not but result in bringing increased honor and 
dignity to the Roman See. t 

38. Effects upon the Papacy of the Extinction of the Roman 
Empire in the West. But if the misfortunes of the Empire in 
the West tended to the enhancement of the reputation and in- 
fluence of the Roman bishops, much more did its final downfall 
tend to the same end. Upon the surrender of the sovereignty of 
the West into the hands of the Emperor of the East, the 
bishops of Rome became the most important personages in west- 
ern Europe, and being so far removed from the court at Con- 
stantinople gradually assumed almost imperial powers,^ They 
became the arbiters between the barbarian chiefs and the Italians, 
and to them were referred for decision the disputes arising between 
cities, states, and kings. Especially did the bishops and arch- 
bishops throughout the West in their contests with the Arian 
barbarian rulers look to Rome for advice and help. It is easy to 
see how greatly these things tended to strengthen the authority 
and increase the influence of the Roman bishops. 

39. The Missions of Rome. Again, the early missionary zeal 
of the church at Rome made her the mother of many churches. 



1 Legend tells how Attila, after his retreat from Italy, being taunted for having 
allowed himself to be turned back by an unarmed bishop, replied, " It was not the 
bishop of whom I was afraid but the man who stood behind him." The legend 
explains that it was St. Peter whom Attila had seen standing with menacing gesture 
behind the Pope. The legend, read aright, is true. Behind every venerated bishop and 
holy abbot the barbarians saw a heavenly figure, whose restraining gesture they dared 
not disregard 

2 See Ancient His/oiy, 2d Rev. Ed., sects. 545, 546. 

3 During this time Gregory the Great (590-604), who was the most eminent of the 
early popes, ruled as though he were a temporal prince, and administered affairs almost 
like an independent sovereign. 



§40] MOSLEM CONQUESTS AND THE PAPACY 31 

all of whom looked up to her with affectionate and grateful 
loyalty. Thus the Angles and Saxons, won to the faith by the 
missionaries of Rome, conceived a deep veneration for the Holy 
See and became its most devoted children. To Rome it was that 
the Christian Britons made their most frequent pilgrimages, and 
thither they sent their offering of St. Peter's pence. And when 
the Saxons became missionaries to their pagan kinsmen of the 
Continent they transplanted into the heart of Germany these same 
feelings of filial attachment and love. 

40. Result of the Fall of Antic ch, Jerusalem, and Alex- 
andria before the Saracens. In the seventh century all the 
great cities of the East fell into the bands of the Mohammedans. 
This was a matter of tremendous consequence for the church at 
Rome, since in every one of these great capitals there was, or 
might have been, a rival of the Roman bishop. The virtual era- 
sure of Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria from the map of 
Christendom left only one city, Constantinople, that could pos- 
sibly nourish a rival of the Roman Church. Thus did the very 
misfortunes of Christendom give an added security to the ever- 
increasing authority of the Roman prelate. 

41. The Iconoclastic Controversy; the Popes become 
Temporal Sovereigns. A dispute about the use of images in 
worship, known in Church history as the "War of the Icono- 
clasts," which broke out in the eighth century between the Greek 
churches of the East and the Latin churches of the West, drew 
after it far-reaching consequences as respects the growing power of 
the Roman pontiffs. 

Even long before the seventh century the churches both in the 
East and in the West had become crowded with images or pictures 
of the apostles, saints, and martyrs, which to the ignorant classes 
at least were objects of superstitious veneration. But the great 
disaster which just at this period befell the Church in the East — 
the irruption and conquests of the Arab Mohammedans — con- 
tributed to create among tlie Christians there a strong sentiment 
against the use of images as aids in worship. A party arose, who, 
like the party of reform among the ancient Hebrews, declared 



32 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS [§ 41 

that God had given the Church over into the hands of the infidels 
because the Christians had departed from his true worship and 
fallen into idolatry. These opposers of the use of images in 
worship were given the name of Iconoclasts (image-breakers). 

Leo the Isaurian, who came to the throne of Constantinople in 
717, was a most zealous Iconoclast. The Greek churches of the 
East having been cleared of images, the Emperor resolved to 
clear also the Latin churches of the West of these symbols. To 
this end he issued a decree that they should not be used. 

The bishop of Rome not only opposed the execution of the 
edict but by the ban of excommunication cut off the Emperor 
and all the iconoclastic churches of the East from communion 
with the true Catholic Church. Though images — paintings and 
mosaics only — were permanently restored in the Eastern churches 
in 842, still by this time other causes of alienation had arisen, and 
the breach between the two sections of Christendom could not 
now be closed. The final outcome was the permanent separation, 
in the last half of the eleventh century, of the Church of the East 
from that of the West. The former became known commonly as 
the Greek, Byzantine, or Eastern Church; the latter, as the Latin, 
Roman Catholic, or Western Church.^ 

The East was thus eventually lost to the Roman See, but the 
loss was more than made good by fresh accessions of power in 
the West. In this quarrel with the Eastern emperors the Roman 
bishops formed an alliance with the Prankish princes of the 
Carolingian house (sect. 72). We shall a little later tell briefly 
the story of this alliance. Never did allies render themselves more 
serviceable to each other. The popes consecrated the Prankish 
chieftains as kings and emperors; the grateful Prankish kings 
defended the popes against all their enemies, imperial and bar- 
barian, and dowering them with cities and provinces, laid the basis 
of their temporal power.- 

1 The official name of the Eastern Church is " The Holy Orthodox Catholic 
Apostolic Eastern Church" and that of the Western Church, "The Holy Catholic 
Apostolic Roman Church." 

2 The cause of the Roman pontiffs, from about the eighth or ninth century forward, 
was greatly furthered by two of the most surprising and successful forgeries in all 



§ 41] REFERENCES ^^ 

Such in broad outline was the way in which grew up the 
Papacy, an institution which, far beyond all others, was destined 
to mold the fortunes and direct the activities of Western Christen- 
dom throughout the mediaeval time. 

Selections from the Sources. Bede, Ecclesiastical History, bk. i, chaps, xxiii- 
XXV ; bk. ii, chaps, i, xiii ; bk. iii, chaps, iii, xxv. Translations and Repri^its 
(University of Pennsylvania), vol. ii, No. 7, " Life of Saint Columban " (an 
instructive biography of an Irish monk ; the subject of this biography is some- 
times named Columba the Younger, to distinguish him from St. Columba of 
lona). WiLLiBALD, The Life of Saint Boniface (trans, into English by George 
W. Robinson). Henderson, E. F., Select Documents of the Middle Ages, pp. 274- 
314, "The Rule of Saint Benedict"; Robinson, J. H., Readings, vol. i, chaps, 
iv, v; Ogg, F. A., Soitrce Book of Mediceval History, chap. vi. 

References (Modern). Zimmer, The h-ish Element in Mediaval Cultzt7-e 
(an authoritative and interesting account of the services rendered mediaeval 
civilization by the Irish monks). Kingsley, C, The Hermits. Montalembert 
(Count de), The Monks of the West from Saint Benedict to Saint Bernard, 
7 vols, (an ardent eulogy of monasticism). Lecky, History of European Morals, 
vol. ii, chap, iv (gives the light and the shade of the picture). Wishart, A. W., 
A Short History of Monks and RIonasterics (the best short account in English 
of the origin, ideals, and effects of the monastic system). Emerton, E., Intro- 
duction to the Study of the Middle Ages, chap, ix, " The Rise of the Christian 



history. These famous documents are known as the Donation of Constantine and the 
False Decretals. The probable object of the former was to justify the donation of 
Pippin (sect. 72) by providing evidence of a similar and earlier donation by the first 
imperial patron of the Church. It " tells how Constantine the Great, cured of his 
leprosy by the prayers of Sylvester, resolved ... to forsake the ancient seat for a new 
capital on the Bosphorus, lest the continuance of the secular government should cramp 
the freedom of the spiritual, and how he bestowed therewith upon the Pope and his 
successors the sovereignty over Italy and the countries of the West." — Brvce, The 
Holy Roman Empire, p. 100 

The so-called Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, which appeared about the middle of the 
ninth century, tended to a similar end as did the Donation of Constantine, although 
they were originally put out in the interest of the bishops and not of the Pope. They 
formed part of a collection of Church documents, and included many alleged letters 
and edicts of the early popes. Granting their genuineness, they went to prove that 
the bishops of Rome in the second and third centuries exercised all that authority 
and extensive jurisdiction which were now being claimed by the popes of the ninth 
century. 

In that uncritical age the documents were received by everybody as authentic. 
The papal party quoted them in part proof of their claims for the Roman See. 
They are now acknowledged by all scholars, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, 
to have been forged. Laurentius Valla (1406-T457), one of the greatest of the 
humanists (sect. 253), was the first to demonstrate the real character of the Donation 
of Constantine. 



34 THE CHURCH AND ITS INSTITUTIONS 

Church." Adams, G. B., Civilization duri)ig the Middle Ages, chap, vi, "The 
Formation of the Papacy." Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, 
chap, ix, " The Primacy of Peter," and chap, x, " The Supremacy of the 
Popes " (an authoritative statement of the Cathohc view of these matters). The 
Cambridge Mcdic",'al History, vol. i, chap, xviii ; vol. ii, chaps, viii, xvi, xxii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The religion of the Germans and their con- 
version : Seignobos, C, History of Mediirval and Modem Civilization, chap. ii. 
2. The scriptorium and the labors of the monks as copyists, chroniclers, and 
authors : Putnam, G. H., Books and their Makers dio'ing the Middle Ages, vol. i, 
pp. 3-8 1. 3. The monasteries as industrial colonies : Cunningham, W., IVestem 
Civilization (Mediceval and Modern limes), pp. 35-40. 



CHAPTER IV 
THE FUSION OF LATIN AND TEUTON 

42. Introductory. The conversion of the barbarians and the 
development in Western Christendom of the central authority of 
the Papacy prepared the way for the introduction among the 
northern races of the arts and the culture of Rome, and contrib- 
uted greatly to hasten in Italy, Spain, and Gaul the fusion into a 
single people of the Latins and the Teutons, of which important 
matter we shall treat in the present chapter. We shall tell how 
these two races, upon the soil of the old Empire in the West, 
intermingled their blood, their languages, their laws, their usages 
and customs, to form new peoples, new tongues, and new institu- 
tions. We shall speak of only a few things and say only just 
enough to show how composite is the character of the structure 
that was reared on the site of the ancient Empire, out of the 
ruins of the broken-down civilization of Rome and the new 
contributions of the northern peoples. 

43. The Romance Nations. In some districts the barbarian 
invaders and the Roman provincials were kept apart for a long 
time by the bitter antagonism of race, and by a sense of injury 
on the one hand and a feeling of disdainful superiority on the 
other. But for the most part the Teutonic intruders and the 
Latin-speaking inhabitants of Italy, Spain, and France very soon 
began freely to mingle their blood by family alliances. 

It is quite impossible to say what proportion the Teutons bore 
to the Romans. Of course the proportion varied in the different 
countries. In none of the countries named, however, was it large 
enough to absorb the Latinized population; on the contrary, the 
barbarians were themselves absorbed, yet not without changing 
very essentially the body into which they were incorporated. 
Thus about the end of the fourth century everything in Italy, 

35 



36 THE FUSION OF LATIN AND TEUTON [§44 

Spain, and France — dwellings, cities, dress, customs, language, 
laws, soldiers — reminds us of Rome. A little later and a great 
change has taken place. The barbarians have come in. For a 
time we see everywhere, jostling each other in the streets and 
markets, crowding each other in the theaters and courts, kneel- 
ing together in the churches, the former Romanized subjects of 
the Empire and their uncouth Teutonic conquerors. But by the 
close of the ninth century, to speak in very general terms, the 
two elements have become quite intimately blended, and a cen- 
tury or two later Roman and Teuton have alike disappeared, and 
we are introduced to Italians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen. These 
we call Romance peoples, because at base they are Roman.^ 

44. The Formation of the Romance Languages. During the 
five centuries of their subjection to Rome, the natives of Spain 
and Gaul forgot their barbarous dialects and came to speak a cor- 
rupt Latin. Now, in exactly the same way that the dialects of 
the Celtic tribes of Gaul and of the Celtiberians of Spain had 
given way to the more refined speech of the Romans did the 
rude languages of the Teutons yield to the more cultured speech 
of the Roman provincials. In the course of two or three centu- 
ries after their entrance into the Empire, Goths, Lombards, 
Burgundians, and Franks had, in a large measure, dropped their 
own tongue and were speaking that of the people they had 
subjected. 

But of course this provincial Latin underwent a great change 
upon the lips of the mixed descendants of the Romans and 
Teutons. This change was hastened and rendered greater than 
it would otherwise have been, by the decay of literature and 
learning; for nothing so conserves the forms of a language as its 
embalmment in literature. This fixes and makes permanent the 
forms of words, which in the swift stream of illiterate speech are 
worn and rounded like pebbles in a mountain torrent. 

1 Great Britain did not become a Romance nation on account of the nature of the 
barbarian conquest of that island. As we have seen (sect. 13), the Romanized Celts of 
the eastern half of Britain were mostly destroyed or driven out by the fierce Teutonic 
invaders, so that these intruders remained substantially unmixed till their tongue and 
their law had established themselves in the island. 



§45] RESULT OF CONFUSION OF LANGUAGES 37 

Furthermore, because of the absence of a common popular 
literature, the changes that took place in one country did not 
exactly correspond to those going on in another. Hence, in the 
course of time, we find different dialects springing up, and by 
about the ninth century the Latin has virtually disappeared as a 
spoken language, and its place has been usurped by what will be 
known as the Italian, Spanish, and French languages, all more or 
less resembling the ancient Latin, and all called Romance tongues, 
because children of the old Roman speech. 

45. Consequences of the Confusion of Languages. We are 
now in a position to discern one of the causes that helped to render 
denser that dark pall of ignorance which, settling over western 
Europe in the fifth century, continued almost unrelieved until the 
eleventh. 

As the provincial Latin began to change, the language in which 
the books were written and the everyday speech began to diverge. 
Thus the manuscript rolls which held the wisdom of the Greeks 
and Romans soon became sealed to all save the learned. In this 
way the confusion of tongues conspired with the general con- 
fusion and anarchy of the times to extinguish the last rays of 
science and philosophy, and to deepen the gloom of the night that 
had settled upon all the lands once illumined by ancient learning 
and culture. Several centuries had necessarily to pass before 
the new languages forming could develop each a literature of its 
own (sect. 248). Meanwhile all learning was shut up within the 
walls of the monasteries. " For many centuries," says Hallam, " to 
sum up the account of ignorance in a word, it was rare for a lay- 
man, of whatever rank, to know how to sign his name." Charle- 
magne, king of the Franks, the most renowned personage of the 
five centuries immediately following the fall of Rome, was unable 
to write. 

46. The Personal Character of the Teutonic Laws. The 
laws of the barbarians were generally personal instead of ter- 
ritorial, as with us; that is, instead of all the inhabitants of a 
given country being subject to the same laws, there were different 
ones for the different classes of society. The Latins, for instance, 



38 THE FUSION OF LATIN AND TEUTON [§47 

were subject in private law only to the old Roman code, while the 
Teutons lived under the tribal rules and regulations which they 
had brought with them from beyond the Rhine and the Danube. 

Even among themselves the Teutons knew nothing of the 
modern legal maxim that all should stand equal before the law. 
The penalty inflicted upon the evildoer depended not upon the 
nature of his crime but upon his rank or that of the party injured. 
Thus slaves and serfs were beaten and put to death for minor 
offenses, while a freeman might atone for any crime, even for 
murder, by the payment of a fine, the amount of the penalty 
being determined by the rank of the victim. 

47. Ordeals. The agencies relied upon by the Teutons to 
ascertain the guilt or innocence of accused persons show in how 
rude a state the administration of justice among them was. One 
very common method of proof was by what were called ordeals, 
in which the question was submitted to the judgment of God. 
Of these the chief were the ordeal by fire, the ordeal by ivater, 
and the ivager of battle} 

The ordeal by fire consisted in taking in the hand a piece of 
red-hot iron, or in walking blindfolded with bare feet over a row 
of hot ploughshares laid lengthwise at irregular distances. If the 
person escaped unharmed, his innocence was held to be 
established. Another way of performing the fire ordeal was by 
running through the flames of two fires built close together, or 
by walking over live brands; hence the phrase ''to haul over 
the coals." 

The ordeal by water was of two kinds, by hot water and by 
cold. In the hot-water ordeal the accused person thrust his arm 
into boiling water, and if no hurt was visible upon the arm three 
days after the operation, the party was considered guiltless. When 
we speak of one's being in "hot water," we use an expression 
which had its origin in this ordeal. 

1 The wager of battle is by some writers treated as a distinct form of trial ; but 
being an appeal to the decision of Heaven, it rested on the same principle as 
the trials by fire and by water, and consequently is properly given a place among 
the ordeals. 



§47] 



ORDEALS 



39 



In the cold-water trial the suspected person was thrown into 
a stream or pond: if he floated, he was held guilty; if he sank, 
he was held innocent. The water, it was believed, would reject 
the guilty, but receive the innocent into its bosom. The practice 
common in Europe until a very recent date of trying supposed 
witches by throwing them into a pond of water to see whether 
they would sink or 
float, grew out of this 
superstition. 

The trial by combat, 
or wager of battle, was 
a solemn judicial duel. 
It was resorted to in 
the belief that God 
would give victory to 
the right. Naturally 
it was a favorite mode 
of trial among a people 
who found their chief 
delight in fighting. 
Even the judge in 
some cases resorted to 
it to maintain the 
authority and dignity 
of his court. To a 
person who had dis- 
regarded a summons the judge would send a challenge in this 
form: '^I sent for thee, and thou didst not think it worth thy 
while to come; I demand therefore satisfaction for this thy con- 
tempt." Religious disputes also were sometimes settled by this 
sort of "martial logic." In Spain as late as the eleventh century 
a contention as to which of two liturgies should be adopted was 
decided by a combat between two knights. 

The ordeal was frequently performed by deputy, that is, one 
person for hire or for the sake of friendship would undertake it for 
another; hence the expression ''to go through fire and water to 




Fig. 6. Trial bv Combat. (From a manuscript 
of the fifteenth century ; after Lacroix) 



40 



THE FUSION OF LATIN AND TEUTON 



[§47 




serve one." Especially was such substitution common in the 
judicial duel, as women and ecclesiastics were generally forbidden 
to appear personally in the lists. There are instances mentioned, 
however, where even women performed the wager of battle; in 
which case, to equalize the conditions, the man was placed in 
a pit waist-deep, with his left hand tied behind his back. 

The champions, as the 
deputies were called, be- 
came in time a regular 
class in society, like the 
gladiators in ancient 
Rome. Religious houses 
and chartered towns hired 
champions at a regular 
salary to defend all the 
cases to which they might 
become a party. In order 
to make sure that the 
champion should not, 
through treachery, cow- 
ardice, or collusion with 
his antagonist, betray the 
cause he had been engaged to defend, he was subjected to severe 
penalties, such as the loss of a hand or of a foot, or perchance 
death by hanging, if he allowed himself to be worsted in a combat.^ 

1 There were many other forms of the ordeal, besides those we have given, in 
use among the different Teutonic tribes, some of which were plainly native cus- 
toms, while others seem to have been introduced by the Christian priests. Thus, 
there was the ordeal by consecrated bread ; if the morsel strangled the person, 
he was adjudged guilty. From this form of trial arose the expression, " May this 
morsel be my last." In what was called the ordeal of the bier the person charged 
with murder was made to touch the body of the dead man ; if the body stirred 
or blood flowed afresh from the wound, the man was held guilty of the murder. 

Such ordeals are found among all primitive peoples. For proof by ordeal among 
the Hebrews, see Num. v. 11-31 and Josh. vii. 16-18. The combat between David 
and Goliath, being an appeal to the judgment of Heaven, possesses the essential 
element of the judicial duel. We also find an ordeal in the test proposed by Elijah to 
the prophets of Baal, — i Kings xviii. 17-40. It was the same among the Greeks. 
Thus, for instance, in Sophocles' A>!iii;;o>ie the watchman is made to say, " Prepared 
we were to take up red-hot iron, to walk through fire." 



Fig. 7. Wager of Battle between a 
Man and Woman. (From a manuscript 
of the fifteenth century ; after Lea, Super- 
stition and Force) 



§48] REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW 41 

43. The Revival of the Roman Law. Now, the barbarian 
law system, if such it can be called, the character of which we 
have merely suggested by the preceding illustrations, gradually 
displaced the Roman law in all those countries where the two sys- 
tems at first existed alongside each other, save in Italy and 
southern France, where the provincials greatly outnumbered the 
invaders. But the admirable jurisprudence of Rome was bound 
to assert its superiority. About the close of the eleventh century 
there was a great revival in the study of the Roman law as 
embodied in the Justinian Code, and in the course of a century 
or two this became either the groundwork or a strong modifying 
element in the law systems of almost all the peoples of Europe. 

What took place may be illustrated by reference to the fate 
of the Teutonic languages in Gaul, Italy, and Spain. As the 
barbarian tongues, after maintaining a place in those countries 
for tvv^o or three centuries, at length gave place to the superior 
Latin, which became the basis of the new Romance languages, 
so now in the domain of law the barbarian maxims and customs, 
though holding their place more persistently, likewise finally give 
way, almost everywhere and in a greater or less degree, to the 
more excellent law system of the Empire. Rome must fulfill her 
destiny and give laws to the nations. 

Though longer delayed in their adoption, the law maxims and 
principles of the Empire at length became more widely spread 
and influential than the Latin speech; for even England, though 
she clung tenaciously to her Teutonic customs and maxims, just 
as she held on to her own Teutonic speech, could not escape the 
influence of the Roman jurisprudence, which penetrated there, 
and, to a certain extent, chiefly through the courts of the Church, 
modified English law, just as the Latin in an indirect way finally 
modified and enriched the English speech, while leaving it the 
same in groundwork and structure. " Our laws," says Lord Bacon, 
"are mixed as our language; and as our language is so much 
the richer, the laws are the more complete." 

Under the influence of the classical revival, the various ordeals, 
which were already disappearing before the growing enlightenment 



42 THE FUSION OF LATIN AND TEUTON [§48 

of the age and the steady opposition of the papal authority, rap- 
idly gave way to modes of trial more consonant with reason and 
the spirit of the civil law. 

Selections from the Sources. Translatio7is and Reprints (University of 
Pennsylvania), vol. iv, No. 4, '" Ordeals," etc. Henderson, E. F., Select His- 
torical Documents, pp. 176-189, " The Salic Law," and pp. 314-319, '■'' Formulae 
Liturgicae in use at Ordeals " ; Lee, G. C, Soitrce-book of English History, chap, v, 
"Anglo-Saxon Laws " ; Ogg, F. A., Source Book of Media'oal History, chap. xii. 

References (Modern). Emerton, E., Ititrodudion to the Middle Ages, 
chap, viii, "Germanic Ideas of Law." Lea, H. C, Superstition and Force: 
Essays on the Wager of Law, the Wager of Battle, the Ordeal and Torture. 
MliNRO, U. C, and Sellerv, G. C, ]\Iedi(rval Civilization, pp. 310-325. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The spread of the Latin speech and the 
formation of the Romance languages : Abbott, F. R., The Common People of 
Ancient Rome, pp. 3-31. 2. The contribution made by the Germans to civili- 
zation : Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, chap. v. 3. The 
influence of the Roman law upon the law systems of Europe: Iladley, J., 
Introduction to Roman Law, lect. ii. ■ 



CHAPTER V 

THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 

49. The Era of Justinian (a.d. 527-565). During the fifty 
years immediately following the fall of Rome, the Eastern em- 
perors struggled hard and sometimes doubtfully to withstand the 
waves of the barbarian inundation which constantly threatened to 
overwhelm Constantinople with the same awful calamities that 
had befallen the imperial city of the West. Had the New Rome — 
the destined refuge for a thousand years of Graeco-Roman learning 
and culture — also gone down at this time before the storm, the 
loss to the cause of civilization would have been incalculable. 

Fortunately, in the year 527, there ascended the Eastern throne 
a prince of unusual ability, to whom fortune gave a general of 
such rare genius that his name has been allotted a place in 
the short list of the great commanders of the world, Justinian 
was the name of the prince, and Belisarius that of the soldier. 
The sovereign has given name to the period, which is called after 
him the " Era of Justinian." 

50. Justinian as the Restorer of the Empire and " The Law- 
giver of Civilization." One of the most important matters in 
the reign of Justinian is what is termed the "Imperial Resto- 
ration," by which is meant the recovery from the barbarians of 
several of the provinces of the West upon which they had seized. 
Africa, as we have seen (sect. 10), was first wrested from the 
Vandals. Italy was next recovered from the Goths and again 
made a part of the Roman Empire. Besides recovering Africa 
and Italy from the barbarians, Justinian also reconquered from 
the Visigoths the southeastern part of Spain. 

But that which gives Justinian's reign a greater distinction than 
any conferred upon it by the achievements of his generals was 

43 



44 



THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST 



L§ 51 



the collection and publication by him of the Corpus Juris Civilis, 
the " Body of the Roman Law." This work embodied all the law 
knowledge of the ancient Romans, and was the most precious 
legacy of Rome' to the world/ In its publication Justinian 
earned the title of "The Lawgiver of Civilization." 

Justinian also earned renown as one of the world's greatest 
builders. He rebuilt with increased splendor the Church of Santa 
Sophia, which, founded by Constantine the Great, had been 
burned during a riot in his reign. The structure still stands, 













Imperial Possessions at Opening: of Reign. 
|2£lj I-ands reconquered from the Barbarians 




The Roman Empire under Justinian 

though the cross which originally surmounted the dome was in 
1453 replaced by the Moslem crescent. In its interior decorations 
this edifice is regarded as one of the most beautiful creations of 
Christian art. 

5L Introduction of the Silk Industry. The introduction 
and establishment in Europe of the industry of silk production 
deserves special notice as one of the important matters of a 
reign so crowded with significant events as to render it an epoch 
in history. Before the time of Justinian the markets of the West 
were supplied with silk from China, where the culture of the mul- 
berry-feeding silkworm had been carried on as one of the most 
important industries of the country from time immemorial. The 



1 See A?!cici!t History, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 565. 



§52] THE EMPIRE BECOMES GREEK 45 

precious material was brought to Europe, sometimes by sea, but 
more usually over the Asian land routes of travel. It was a 
highly prized article of luxury, the more delicate fabrics being 
worth, it is said, their iveight in gold. 

The Chinese guarded jealously their industry, and would not 
allow the worms to be carried out of the country. Their watch- 
fulness, however, was eluded by two Persian monks, who having 
concealed in a hollow cane some eggs of the silkworm, made their 
way out of the empire without detection, and finally reached 
Constantinople safely with these "spoils of the East," — spoils 
far more valuable than any which had ever been borne to the Old 
Rome by her most successful generals. The precious eggs were 
safely hatched and the species was rapidly propagated, so that in 
a short time the silk industry of Europe became an important 
factor in her industrial life. 

52, The Empire becomes Greek. Less than a generation after 
the death of Justinian, the Arabs, of whom we shall tell in the 
next chapter, entered upon their surprising career of conquest, 
which in a short time completely changed the face of the entire 
East. 

One result of the conquest of the Arabs was to cut off from 
the Empire those provinces that had the smallest Greek element, 
and thus to render the population subject to the Emperor more 
homogeneous, more thoroughly Greek. The Roman element dis- 
appeared, and though the government still retained the imperial 
character impressed upon it by the conquerors of the world, the 
court of Constantinople became Greek in tone, spirit, and manners. 
Hence, instead of longer applying to the Empire the designation 
Roman, many historians call it from this time on the Greek or 
Byzantine Empire. 

53. Services rendered European Civilization by the Roman 
Empire in the East. The later Roman Empire rendered such 
eminent services to the European world that it justly deserves an 
important place in universal history. First, as a military outpost 
it held the Eastern frontier of European civilization for a thousand 
years against Asiatic barbarism. 



46 THE ROMAN EMPIRE IN THE EAST [§ 53 

Second, it was the keeper for centuries of the treasures of 
ancient civilization and the instructor of the new Western 
nations in law, in government and administration, in literature, 
in painting, in architecture, and in the industrial arts. 

Third, it kept alive the imperial ideal, and gave this molding 
principle back to the West in the time of Charlemagne. Without 
the later Roman Empire of the East there would never have been 
a Romano-German Empire of the West (sect. 74). 

Fourth, it was the teacher of religion and civilization to the 
Slavic races of eastern Europe. Russia forms part of the civilized 
world to-day largely by virtue of what she received from New 
Rome. 

References (Modern). Gibbon, E., Decline and Fall, chaps, xl-xliv (on the 
reign of Justinian; chap. xHv deals with Roman law). Oman, C. W. C, The 
Stoiy of the Bvzantine Empire, chaps, iv-viii ; and The Dark Ages, chaps, v, vi. 
HODGKIN, T., Italy and her Invaders, vol. iv, "The Imperial Restoration." 
Rawlinson, G., The Seventh Great Oriental Monarchy, chap. xxiv. Encyc. 
Brit., Art. "Justinian I," by James Bryce. Bury, J. B., History of the Later 
Roman Empire, 2 vols, (a work of superior scholarship). Harrison, F., 
Byzantine History in the Early Middle Ages (a brilliant lecture). The Cambridge 
Medieval Histoiy, vol. ii, chaps, i, ii. Seignobos, C, Histoty of Mediieval ajid 
Modern Civilization, chap. iii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Justinian as a builder; .St. Sophia: Oman, 
C. W. C, The Byzantine Empire, chap, viii, pp. 106-1 11 ; Gibbon, E., chap, xl 
(consult table of contents). 2. Introduction into Europe of the silk industry : 
Gibbon, E., chap, xl (consult table of contents). 3. The Hippodrome and the 
" Blues " and the " Greens " : Oman, C. W. C, The Byzantine Empire, chap, ii, 
pp. 22-25; chap, vi, pp. 75-So; Munro, D. C., and Sellery, G. C., Medieval 
Civilization, pp. S7-113. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE RISE OF ISLAM 

54. The Attack from the South upon Ancient Civilization. 

We have seen the Teutonic barbarians of the north descend upon 
and wrest from the Roman Empire all its provinces in the west. 
We are now to watch a similar attack made upon the Empire by 
the Arabs of the south, and to see wrested from the emperors of 
the East a large part of the lands still remaining under their rule/ 

55. Origin and Character of the Arabs. The Arabs, who are 
now about to play their surprising part in history, are, after the 
Hebrews and the Phoenicians, the most important people, histori- 
cally, of the Semitic race. The name Saracen, applied to them, is 
of doubtful origin, but seems to come from two Arabic words 
meaning "children of the desert." They are divided into two 
distinct classes, — dwellers in towns and dwellers in tents. It is to 
the latter class alone that the term Bedouins is properly applied. 

Secure in their inaccessible deserts, the Arabs have never as a 
nation bowed their necks to a foreign conqueror, although por- 
tions of the Arabian peninsula have been repeatedly subjugated 
by different invaders. 

56. The Religious Condition of Arabia before Mohammed. 
Before the reforms of Mohammed the Arabs were idolaters. 
Their holy city was Mecca. Here was the ancient and most 
revered shrine of the Kaaba," where was preserved a sacred black 
stone that was believed to have been given by an angel to 
Abraham. To this Meccan shrine pilgrimages were made from 
the most remote parts of Arabia. 

But though polytheism was the prevailing religion of Arabia, 
still there were in the land many followers of other faiths. The 

1 The student should make a careful study of the maps after pp. 8 and 52. 

2 So named from its having the shape of a cube. 

47 



48 THE RISE OF ISLAM [§57 

Jews especially were to be found in some parts of the peninsula 
in great numbers, having been driven from Palestine by the 
Roman persecutions. From them the Arab teachers had been 
made acquainted with the doctrine of one sole God. From the 
numerous Christian converts dwelling among them they had 
learned something of the doctrines of Christianity. It was from 
the Jews and Christians, doubtless, that Mohammed learned many 
of the doctrines that he taught. 

About the time to which we have now come there was much 
religious unrest in Arabia. As it was in Judea at the time of the 
appearance of Christ, so was it now in this southern land. There 
were here many seekers after God, — men who, dissatisfied with 
the old idolatry, were ready to embrace a higher faith. 

Such was the religious condition of the tribes of Arabia about 
the beginning of the seventh century of our era when there 
appeared among them a prophet under whose teachings the fol- 
lowers of all the idolatrous worships were led to give assent to a 
single and simple creed and were animated by a fanatical enthu- 
siasm that drove them forth from their deserts upon a career of 
conquest which could not be stayed until they had overrun the 
fairest portions of the Roman and Persian empires and given 
a new religion to a large part of the human race. 

57. Mohammed. Mohammed, the great Prophet of the Arabs, 
was born in the holy city of Mecca, probably in the year a.d. 570. 
He sprang from the distinguished tribe of the Koreish, the cus- 
todians of the sacred shrine of the Kaaba. In his early years he 
was a shepherd and a watcher of flocks by night, as the great 
religious teachers Moses and David had been before him. Later 
he became a merchant and a camel driver. 

Mohammed possessed a soul that was early and deeply stirred 
by the contemplation of those themes that ever attract the reli- 
gious mind. He declared that he had visions in which the angel 
Gabriel appeared to him and made to him revelations which he 
was commanded to make known to his fellow-men. The starting 
point of the new faith which he was to teach was this: There is 
but one God, and Mohammed is his Prophet. 



§ 58J THE HEGIRA . 49 

For a long time Mohammed endeavored to gain adherents 
merely by persuasion; but such was the incredulity which he 
everywhere met that at the end of three years his disciples 
numbered only forty persons. 

58. The Hegira (a.d. 622). The teachings of Mohammed at 
last aroused the anger of a powerful party among the Koreish, 
who feared that they as the guardians of the national idols of the 
Kaaba would be compromised in the eyes of the other tribes by 
allowing such heresy to be openly taught by one of their number, 
and accordingly they began to persecute Mohammed and his 
followers. 

To escape these persecutions Mohammed fled to the neighbor- 
ing city of Medina. This Hegira, or Flight, as the word signiiies, 
occurred a.d. 622, and was considered by the Moslems as such 
an important event in the history of their religion that they 
adopted it as the beginning of a new era, and from it still con- 
tinue to reckon historical dates. 

59. The Faith extended by the Sword. His cause being 
warmly espoused by the inhabitants of Medina, Mohammed now 
assumed along with the character of a lawgiver and moral teacher 
that of a warrior.^ He declared it to be the will of God that 
the new faith should be spread by the sword. 

The year following the Hegira he began to attack and plunder 
caravans. The flame of a sacred war was soon kindled. Warriors 
from all quarters flocked to the standard of the Prophet. Their 
reckless enthusiasm was intensified by the assurance that death 
met in fighting those who resisted the true faith insured the 
martyr immediate entrance upon the joys of paradise. Within ten 
years from the time of the assumption of the sword by Moham- 
med, Mecca had been captured — an event which constitutes a 
landmark in the career of Islam — and the new creed established 
widely among the independent tribes of Arabia. 

1 Mohammed about this time gave his followers the following revelation, which 
had great influence in securing for early Islam its remarkable military successes : 
" And those who are slain in God's cause, their works shall not go wrong ; He . . . will 
make them enter into Paradise which He has told them of." — The Koran, sura xlvii. 5 
(Palmer's trans.) 



so THE RISE OF ISLAM [§ 60 

60. The Koran and its Teachings. The doctrines of Moham- 
medanism, or Islam, which means '^ submission to God," are con- 
tained in the Koran, which is beheved by the orthodox to have 
been, written from all eternity on tablets in heaven. From time 
to time Mohammed recited to his disciples portions of the 
"heavenly book" as its contents were revealed to him in his 
dreams and visions. These communications were held in the 
"breasts of men," or were written down upon pieces of pottery, 
the broad shoulder-bones of sheep, and the ribs of palm leaves.^ 
Soon after the death of the Prophet these scraps of writing were 
religiously collected, supplemented by tradition, and then ar- 
ranged chiefly according to length. Such was the origin of 
the sacred book of Islam. 

The fundamental doctrine of Islam is the unity of God: "There 
is no God save Allah" echoes throughout the Koran. To this is 
added the equally binding declaration that "Mohammed is the 
prophet of Allah." 

The Koran inculcates the practice of four cardinal virtues or 
duties. The first is prayer ; five times every day must the believer 
turn his face towards Mecca and engage in devotion. The second 
requ'rement is almsgiving, or payment of the so-called holy tax. 
The third is keeping the fast of Ramadan, which lasts a whole 
month, throughout which period no food must be eaten during 
the day. The fourth duty is making a pilgrimage to Mecca. 
Every person who can possibly do so is required to make this 
journey. 

To the faithful the Koran promises a heaven filled with every 
sensual delight, with flowers and fruits and bright-eyed maidens 
(houris) of ravishing beauty, and threatens unbelievers and the 
doers of evil with the torments of a hell filled with every horror 
of flame and demon. 

61, The Sunna, Islam is not based upon the Koran alone. 
It rests in part upon what is known as the Snmia, that is, a great 
body of traditions of the Prophet's sayings, — those not forming 

1 Palmer in the introduction to his translation of the Koran says that it is "probable 
Mohammed could neither read nor write." 



§62] CONQUESTS OF THE ARABS 51 

a part of the sacred book, — his actions, practices, and decisions 
handed down from his immediate companions. The first col- 
lection of these was made in the second century after Moham- 
med's death. These traditions are regarded by the orthodox 
Moslem as being almost as sacred and authoritative as the words 
of the Koran itself. 

62. The Conquest of Persia, Syria, Egypt, and North 
Africa. For exactly one century after the death of Mohammed 
the caliphs, or successors of the Prophet,^ were engaged ir an al- 
most unbroken series of conquests. Persia was subjugated and 
the authority of the Koran was established throughout the land 
of the Zend-Avesta. Syria was wrested from the Eastern Roman 
Empire and Asia Minor was overrun. Egypt and North Africa, 
the latter just recently delivered from the Vandals, were also 
snatched from the hands of the Byzantine emperors. 

By the conquest of Persia Zoroastrianism, a religion with a 
great past, was, as a force in history, destroyed.- By the conquest 
of Syria, the birthplace of Christianity was lost to the Christian 
world. By the conquest of North Africa, lands whose history for 
a thousand years had been intertwined with that of the opposite 
shores of Europe, and which at one time seemed destined to share 
in the career of freedom and progress opening to the peoples 
of that continent, were drawn back into the fatalism and the stag- 
nation of the East. From being an extension of Europe they 
became once more an extension of Asia. 

63. Attacks upon Constantinople. Thus in only a little more 
than fifty years from the death of Mohammed his standard had 
been carried by the lieutenants of his successors through Asia to 

1 Abu Bekr (a. d. 632-634), Mohammed's father-in-law, was the first caliph. He was 
followed by Omar (a.d. 634-644), Othman (a.d. 644-655), and Ali (a.d. 655-661), 
all of whom fell by the hands of assassins. Ali was the last of the four so-called 
orthodox caliphs. 

2 The number of Guebers, or fire worshipers, in Persia at the present time is about 
100,000, found for the most part at Yezd and in the province of Kerman. A larger 
number may be counted in western India, — the descendants of the Guebers who fled 
from Persia at the time of the Arabian invasion. They are there called Parsees, from 
the land whence they came. After the English, they are the most enterprising, 
intelligent, and influential class in India to-day. 



52 THE RISE OF ISLAM [§64 

the Hellespont on the one side and across Africa to the Straits 
of Gibraltar on the other. We may expect to see the Saracens 
at one or both of these points attempt the invasion of Europe. 

The first attempt was made in the East, where the Arabs en- 
deavored to gain control of the Bosphorus by wresting Constanti- 
nople from the hands of the Eastern emperors; but the use by 
the besieged of a recently invented combustible compound known 
as marine fire ("Greek fire") and timely aid from the Bulgarians 
saved the capital for several centuries longer to the Christian 
world. The check that the Saracens here received was doubtless 
next in importance for European civilization to the check given 
their conquering hordes a little later in France at Tours. 

64. The Conquest of Spain (a.d. 7ii). While the Moslems 
were thus being repulsed from Europe at its eastern extremity, 
they succeeded in gaining a foothold in Spain. Roderic, the last 
of the Visigothic kings (sect. 9), was hopelessly defeated in 
battle, and all the peninsula, save some mountainous regions in 
the northwest, quickly submitted to the invaders. By this con- 
quest some of the fairest provinces of Spain were lost to Christen- 
dom for a period of eight hundred years. 

No sooner had the subjugation of the country been effected than 
multitudes of colonists from Arabia, Syria, and North Africa 
crowded into the peninsula, until in a short time the provinces of 
Seville, Cordova, Toledo, and Granada became predominantly 
Arabic in dress, manners, language, and religion. 

65. Invasion of France; Battle of Tours (a.d. 732). Four 
or five years after the conquest of Spain the Saracens crossed the 
Pyrenees and established themselves upon the plains of Gaul. 
This advance of the IMoslem host beyond the northern wall of 
Spain was viewed with the greatest alarm by all Christendom. It 
looked as though the followers of Mohammed would soon possess 
all the continent. As Draper pictures it, the Crescent, lying in a 
vast semicircle upon the northern shore of Africa and the curving 
coast of Asia, with one horn touching the Bosphorus and the 
other the Straits of Gibraltar, seemed about to round to the full 
and overspread all Europe. 



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§ 66] GOLDEN AGE OF THE CALIPHATE 53 

In the year 732, just one hundred years after the death of 
the Prophet, the Franks, under their leader Charles Martel, and 
their allies met the Moslems upon the plains of Tours in the center 
of Gaul and committed to the issue of a single battle the fate of 
Christendom and the future course of history. The Arabs suffered 
an overwhelming defeat and soon withdrew behind the Pyrenees. 

The young Christian civilization of western Europe was thus 
delivered from an appalling danger such as had not threatened it 
since the fearful days of Attila and the Huns. 

66. Golden Age of the Arabian Caliphate. At first the 
caliphs ruled from the city of Medina; then for almost a hundred 
years (a.d. 661-750) they issued their commands from the city 
of Damascus; later they established their court on the Lower 
Tigris at Bagdad, — ^the representative of the ancient Babylon, — 
which city for a period of more than five hundred years was a 
brilliant center of Arabian civilization.^ 

The golden age of the caliphate of Bagdad covered the latter 
part of the eighth and the ninth century of our era, and was illus- 
trated by the reigns of such princes as Al-Mansur (a.d. 754-775) 
and the renowned Harun-al-Rashid (a.d. 786-809). During 
this period science and philosophy and literature were most 
assiduously cultivated by the Arabian scholars, and the court of 
the caliphs presented in culture and luxury a striking contrast 
to the rude and barbarous courts of the kings and princes of 
Western Christendom. 

67. The Dismemberment of the Caliphate. ''At the close of 
the first century of the Hegira," writes Gibbon, ''the caliphs 
were the most potent and absolute monarchs of the globe. The 

1 The caliphs who reigned at Damascus are known as the Ommiads and those 
who had their court at Bagdad as the Abbasids. In securing their power the Ommiads 
had caused the murder of the two sons of Ali, Hassan and Hosain. These youths 
were ever regarded as martyrs by the friends of the house of AH, and the schism 
caused by their cruel death has never been healed. The Mohammedans of Persia, 
who are known as Shiahs, are the leaders of the party of Ali, while the Turks 
and Arabs, known as Sunnites, are the chief adherents of the opposite party. 
These latter take their name from the fact that they hold the Sunna (sect. 6i) as 
sacred and authoritative. The Shiahs, on the other hand, reject all these traditions 
of the Prophet save such as can be traced back to .Mi or to his immediate posterity. 



54 THE RISE OF ISLAM [§ 68 

word that went forth from the palace at Damascus was obeyed 
on the Indus, on the Jaxartes, and on the Tagus." Scarcely less 
potent was the word that at first went forth from Bagdad. But 
in a short time the extended empire, through the quarrels of 
sectaries and the ambitions of rival aspirants for the honors of the 
caliphate, was broken in fragments, and from three capitals — 
from Bagdad upon the Tigris, from Cairo upon the Nile, and 
from Cordova upon the Guadalquivir — were issued the commands 
of three rival caliphs, each of whom was regarded by his adher- 
ents as the sole rightful spiritual and civil successor of Mohammed. 
All, however, held the great Prophet in the same reverence, all 
maintained with equal zeal the sacred character of the Koran, and 
all prayed with their faces turned toward the holy city of Mecca. 

68. The Civilization of Arabian Islam. The Saracens were 
coheirs of antiquity with the Teutonic peoples. They made es- 
pecially their own the scientific^ accumulations of the ancient civil- 
izations and bequeathed them to Christian Europe. These elements 
of civilization they added to and enriched, and in several of the 
countries of which they took possession, especially in Babylonia 
and in Spain, there developed a civilization which in some respects 
far surpassed any that the world had yet seen. 

In the arrangements of their court, the organization of their 
army, and the administration of their government the Arabs 
imitated the Persians or the Byzantine Greeks. Their govern- 
ment was an absolute monarchy, such as has always been the 
favorite form among oriental peoples. 

The Moslem law system, the basis of which is found in the 
Koran, was the most original creation of the Arab mind. After 
the Roman law, it is probably the most influential and widely 
obeyed system of laws and regulations that any race or civilization 
has developed. Since the system embraces religious as well as 
civil matters, it is in some respects like the Mosaic code, from 
which it freely borrowed. It deals with all kinds of subjects, 
ranging from prayer and pilgrimages to contracts and inheritances. 

i Gibbon affirms that no Greek poet, orator, or historian was ever translated into 
Arabic. See Dccinic and Fall, chap. lii. 



§6S] ARABIAN CIVILIZATION 55 

Commerce and trade, in all the countries of which the Arabs 
made themselves masters, assumed a fresh activity and a new 
importance. The Arabs in Babylonia and Syria became the heirs 
and successors of the ancient Chaldaeans and Phoenicians, and re- 
created that commercial activity of the earlier time that nourished 
the great cities of Babylon, Tyre, and Sidon. As in the Odyssey 
of Homer we have a mirror of the commercial activity and the 
adventurous trade voyages of the early maritime Greeks, so in 
the marvelous stories of Sindbad the Sailor we have a like mirror of 
the voyages and adventures of the Arabian sailors. 

In the lighter forms of literature — romance and poetry — 
the Arabs produced much that possesses a high degree of excel- 
lence. In the field of romance they followed the Persian 
story-tellers. The inimitable tales of the Arabian Nights, besides 
being a valuable commentary on Arabian life and manners at 
the time of the culmination of oriental culture at the court 
of Bagdad, form also an addition to the imperishable portion 
of the literature of the world. The poetry of the Arabs was 
wholly original. It was the natural and beautiful expression of 
the Arabian genius. 

The physical sciences were also pursued by the Arabian schol- 
ars with great eagerness and with considerable success. Geog- 
raphy was forced upon their attention by their wide conquests and 
their extended trade relations. From the Greeks and the Hindus 
they received the germs of astronomy, geometry, arithmetic, alge- 
bra, medicine, botany, and other sciences. Almost all of the 
sciences that thus came into their hands were improved and 
enriched by them, and then transmitted to European scholars.^ 
They made medicine for the first time a true science. They 
devised what is known from them as the Arabic system of 

1 What Europe received in science from Arabian sources is kept in remembrance 
by such words as alchemy, alcohol, alembic, algebra, alkali, almanac, azimzUh, chetnistry, 
elixir, zenith, and nadir. To how great an extent the chief Arabian cities became 
the manufacturing centers of the mediaeval world is indicated by the names which 
these places have given to various textile fabrics and other articles. Thus muslin' 
comes from Mosul, on the Tigris, damask from Damascus, and gauze from Gaza. 
Damascus and Toledo blades tell of the proficiency of the Arab workmen in 
metallurgy. 



56 



THE RISE OF ISLAM 



[§68 



notation,^ and gave to Europe this indispensable instrument of all 
scientific investigations dependent upon mathematical calculations. 
All this literary and scientific activity naturally found expres- 
sion in the establishment of schools, universities, and libraries. 
In all the great cities of the Arabian Empire, as at Bagdad, Cairo, 
and Cordova, centuries before Europe could boast anything be- 
yond cathedral or monastic schools, great universities were drawing 




Fig. S. The Mosque of Cordo\a. (From a photograph) 

together vast crowds of eager young Moslems and creating an 
atmosphere of learning and refinement. The famous "university" 
at Cairo, which has at the present day an attendance of several 
thousand students, is a survival from the great days of Arabian 
Islam. 

In the erection of mosques and other public edifices the Arab 
architects developed a new and striking style of architecture, — 
some of the most beautiful specimens of which are preserved to 



1 The figures or numerals, with the exception of the zero symbol, employed in their 
system they seem to have borrowed from India. 



§69] ISLAM AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 57 

us at Cordova and Granada in Spain, — a style which has given 
to modern builders some of their finest models. 

69. The Evil and the Good in Islam. The first fruits of 
Islam might well lead one to regard it as a faith conducive to 
culture; but it must be borne in mind that the splendid civili- 
zation of Bagdad, Cairo, and Cordova was, in great measure at 
least, a reflected glory. The relation of this brilliant culture to 
that of the declining Byzantine and Persian empires has been aptly 
illustrated by likening it to the clouds which gather about the 
setting sun and are lighted up by it wdth a splendor not their own. 

In many of its teachings and institutions Islam, in truth, is a 
system unfavorable to social progress. In opposition to Christian- 
ity, it tolerates polygamy ^ and places little restraint upon divorce, 
thus destroying the sacredness of family life. In authorizing the 
faithful to make slaves of their captives in holy wars, it legalizes 
slavery; Mohammedan countries are the main strongholds of 
slavery at the present time. In denying civil equality to un- 
believers, it tends to create contempt for all non-Moslems and 
thus sustains and fosters religious intolerance. 

Islam, however, inculcates some inspiring truths and recom- 
mends some great virtues. Like Christianity it teaches the unity 
of God, immortality, and retributive rewards and punishments 
after death. These doctrines render it immeasurably superior to 
fetichism or to polytheism, and have made it a great force for the 
uplift of multitudes of idolatrous tribes in Asia and Africa. 

Among the leading virtues inculcated by Islam is that of tem- 
perance. The Koran forbids positively to the believer the use of 
wine and inferentially of all strong drinks. To this prohibition 
is attributable the fact that drunkenness is less common and open 
in Mohammedan than in some Christian lands. Indeed, in 
countries where the faith of the Koran is really dominant and the 
influence of Europeans has not been felt, this vice is almost 
unknown. 

1 The Koran (sura iv. 3) allows the believer to take " two, or three, or four wives, 
and not more." By a special dispensation (sura xxxiii. 49) Mohammed was allowed to 
take a larger number. At one time the Prophet had ten wives. 



58 THE RISE OF ISLAM 

Selections from the Sources. The Koran is our chief source for a knowl- 
edge of Islam as a religion. The translation by Palmer, in Saord Books of the 
East, is the best. 77/ c' Spccc/ns and Table-talk of the Prophet Mohainmed (trans, 
by Stanley Lane-Poole). Europeatt History Studies (University of Nebraska), 
vol. ii, No. 3, " Selections from the Koran." Robinson, J. II., Readings, vol. i, 
chap, vi, pp. 1 14-1 20 ; Ogg, F. A., Soiure Book of Alediceval History, chap. vii. 

References (Modern). Muir, W., The Coran : its Composition and Teaehings ; 
The Life of Mohammed; Annals of the Early Caliphate \ and The Rise anil 
Decline of Islam (all these works are based on the original sources; they are, 
however, written in an unfriendly and unsympathetic spirit). Smith, R. 15., 
Mohammed and MoJiammedan ism (has a short bibliography). Sprenger, A., 
The Life of Mohammed. Irvin<;,W., Mahomet and his Successors. Gibbon, E., 
The Decline and Ball, chaps. 1-lii. MargoLiouth, D. S., Mohammed and the 
Rise of Islam. F"reeman, E. A., History and Conquests of the Saracens (a rapid 
sketch by a master). Syed Ameer Ali, The Spirit of Islam : or the LiJ'e and 
Teachings of Mohammed and Slio/i History of the Saracens. PoOLE, S. L., 
Studies in a Mosque. Encyc. Frit., i ith ed.. Arts. " Mahomet," " Mahommedan 
Institutions," " Mahommedan Law," " Mahommedan Religion." The Cambridge 
Ah'dic7'al Ilistoiy, vol. ii, chaps, .\-xii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Mohammed: Carlyle, T., Heroes and Hero- 
worship, lect. ii, "The Hero as Prophet." 2. S^jme teachings of Islam: 
Gilman, A.,' The Sa?-acens, chap, xv; Seignobos, C, History of MedicBval and 
of Modern Civil izatio>t, chap. iv. 



CHAPTER VII 

CHARLEMAGNE AND THE RESTORATION OF THE EMPIRE 
IN THE WEST 

70. Introductory. We return now to the West. The Franks, 
who with the aid of their confederates withstood the advance of 
the Saracens upon the field of Tours and saved Europe from 
subjection to the Koran, are the people who first attract our 
attention. Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, their king, is the 
imposing figure that moves amidst all the events of the times,^ — 
indeed, is the one who makes the events and renders the period 
an epoch in universal history. 

The story of this era affords the key to very much of the sub- 
sequent history of western Europe. The mere enumeration of 
the events which are to claim our attention will illustrate the 
important and germinal character of the period. We shall tell 
how the Mayors of the Palace of the Merovingian princes became 
the actual kings of the Franks; how, through the liberality of the 
Prankish kings, the popes laid the foundations of their temporal 
sovereignty; and how Charlemagne restored the Roman Empire 
in the West, and throughout its extended limits, in the fusion of 
things Roman and things Teutonic, laid the basis of modern 
civilization. 

71. How Duke Pippin became King of the Franks (a.d. 
751 ). Charles Martel, who saved the Christian civilization of 
western Europe on the field of Tours, although the real head of 
the Prankish nation, was nominally only an officer of the Mero- 
vingian court (sect. ii). He died without ever having borne the 
title of king, notwithstanding he had exercised all the authority 
of that office. 

But Charles' son, Pippin III, aspired to the regal title and 
honors. He resolved to depose his titular master and to make 

59 



6o CHARLEMAGNE [§ 72 

himself king. Not deeming it wise, however, to do this without 
the sanction of the Pope, he sent an embassy to represent to him 
the state of affairs and to sohcit his advice. Mindful of recent 
favors that he had received at the hands of Pippin, the Pope gave 
his approval to the proposed scheme by replying that it seemed 
altogether reasonable that the one who was king in reality should 
be king also in name. This was sufficient. Childeric — such was 
the name of the Merovingian king — was straightway deposed, 
and Pippin, whose own deeds together with those of his illustri- 
ous father had done so much for the Prankish nation and for 
Christendom, was crowned king of the Franks (a.d. 751), and 
thus became the first of the Carolingian line, the name of his 
illustrious son Charles (Charlemagne) giving name to the house. 

72. Pippin helps to establish the Temporal Power of the 
Popes (a.d. 756). Shortly after this transaction Pope Stephen II, 
troubled by the king of the Lombards, besought Pippin's aid 
against the barbarian. Pippin, quick to return the favor which 
the head of the Church had rendered him in the securing of his 
crown, straightway interposed in behalf of the Pope. He de- 
scended into Italy with an army, expelled the Lombards from their 
recent conquests, and made a donation to the Pope of the re- 
gained lands' (a.d. 756). As a symbol of the gift he laid the 
keys of Ravenna and of many other Italian cities on the tomb 
of St. Peter. 

This endowment may be regarded as having practically laid 
the basis of the temporal sovereignty of the popes; for although 
Pope Stephen, as it seems, had already resolved to cast off alle- 
giance to the Eastern Emperor and set up an independent Church 
state, still it is not probable that he could have carried out such 
an enterprise successfully had he not been aided in his project by 
the Prankish king. 

73. Accession of Charlemagne; his Wars. Pippin died in 
the year 767, and his kingdom passed into the hands of his two 
sons, Carloman and Charles, the latter being better known by the 

1 The sovereignty of all these lands belonged nominally to the Emperor at 
Constantinople. His claims were ignored by Pippin. 



§7.V 



THE WARS OF CHARLEMAGNE 



6i 



name he achieved of Charlemagne, or "Charles the Great." Three 
years after the accession of the brothers, Carloman died, and 
Charles took possession of his dominions. 

Charlemagne's long reign of nearly half a century — he ruled 
forty-six years — was filled with military expeditions and con- 
quests, by which he so extended the boundaries of his dominions 
that they came to embrace the larger 
part of western Europe. 

Among the first undertakings of 
Charlemagne was a campaign against 
the Lombards, whose king, Desi- 
derius, was troubling the Pope. 
Charlemagne wrested from Desiderius 
all his possessions, shut up the un- 
fortunate king in a monastery, and 
placed on his own head the famous 
"Iron Crown" of the Lombards 
(sect. 12). 

In the year 778 Charlemagne 
gathered his warriors for a crusade 
against the Mohammedan Moors in 
Spain. He crossed the Pyrenees and 
succeeded in winning from the Mos- 
lems all the northeastern corner of the peninsula. These lands 
thus regained for Christendom he made a part of his dominions, 
under the title of the Spanish March.^ 

But by far the greater number of the campaigns of Charlemagne 
were directed against the still pagan Saxons. These people were 
finally reduced to permanent submission and forced to accept 
Charlemagne as their sovereign and Christianity as their religion. 




Fig. 9. Head of a Ninth- 
Century Bronze Eques- 
trian Statuette. (Thought 
by some to be a portrait of 
Charles the Great) 



1 As Charles was leading his victorious bands back across the Pyrenees, the rear 
of his army, while hemmed in by the walls of the Pass of Roncesvalles, was set upon 
by the wild mountaineers (the Gascons) and cut to pieces before he could give relief. 
Of the details of this event no authentic account has been preserved ; but long after- 
wards, associated with the fabulous deeds of the hero Roland (in the celebrated 
romance Chanson de Roland), it formed a favorite theme of the tales and songs of the 
Trouveurs of northern France (sect. 219). 



62 CHARLEMAGNE [§ 7+ 

74, Restoration of the Empire in the West (a.d. soo). An 
event of seemingly little real moment, yet in its influence upon 
succeeding affairs of the greatest importance, now claims our 
attention. Pope Leo III having called upon Charlemagne for aid 
against a hostile faction at Rome, the king soon appeared in 
person at the capital and punished summarily the disturbers of 
the peace of the Church. The gratitude of Leo now led him to 
make a most signal return for the many services of the Prankish 
king. To understand his act a word of explanation is needed. 

For a considerable time a variety of circumstances had been 
fostering a growing feeling of enmity between the Italians and 
the emperors at Constantinople. Just at this time, by the crime 
of the Empress Irene, who had deposed her son, Constantine VI, 
and put out his eyes that she might have his place, the Byzantine 
throne was vacant, in the estimation of the Italians, who con- 
tended that the crown of the Caesars could not be worn by a 
woman. In view of these circumstances Pope Leo and those 
about him conceived the purpose of taking away from the hereti- 
cal and effeminate Greeks the imperial crown and bestowing it 
upon some strong and orthodox and worthy prince in the West. 

Now, among all the Teutonic chiefs of Western Christendom 
there was none who could dispute in claims to the honor with the 
king of the Franks, the representative of a most illustrious house 
and the strongest champion of the young Christianity of the West 
against her pagan foes. Accordingly, as Charlemagne was partic- 
ipating in the solemnities of Christmas Day in the basilica of 
St. Peter at Rome, the Pope approached the kneeling king, and 
placing a crown of gold upon his head proclaimed him Emperor 
and Augustus (a.d. 800). 

The intention of Pope Leo was, by a sort of reversal of the act 
of Constantine the Great, to bring back from the East the seat of 
the imperial court; but what he really accomplished was a resto- 
ration of the line of emperors in the West, which three hundred 
and twenty-four years before had been ended by Odoacer, when 
he dethroned Romulus Augustulus.^ We say this was what he 

1 See Ancient Hisioiy, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 547. 



§ 75] CHARLES AS A RULER 63 

actually effected; for the Greeks of the East, disregarding wholly 
what the Roman people and the Pope had done, maintained their 
line of emperors just as though nothing had occurred in Italy. 
So now from this time on for centuries there were, most of the 
time, two emperors, one in the East and another in the West, each 
claiming to be the rightful successor of Caesar Augustus/ 

This revival of the Empire in the West was one of the most 
important matters in European history. It gave to the following 
centuries "a great political ideal," which was the counterpart of 
the religious ideal of a universal church embodied in the Papacy, 
and which was to shape large sections of mediaeval history. 

75. Charles the Great as a Ruler. Charlemagne must not be 
regarded as a warrior merely. His most noteworthy work was 
that which he effected as a legislator and administrator. In this 
field, too, were exhibited the finer qualities of his masterful per- 
sonality. In building up his great empire Charlemagne practiced 
much cruelty and unrighteousness, but over this empire, once 
established, he ruled with the constant solicitude of a father. 

Among the characteristic institutions of the Empire Vv^as the 
Diet, or General Assembly, a survival manifestly of the old 
Teutonic folkmote, an assembly of freemen. This body held a 
meeting every year in the spring.^ At these gatherings there 
took place merely an interchange of views between Charlemagne 
and the assembled freemen of the realm; for the Diet was not 
a legislative body. Its functions were confined to giving the 



1 From this time on it will be proper for us to use the terms Wcstei'ii Empire 
and Eastern Empire. These names should not, however, be employed before this 
time, for the two parts of the old Roman Empire were simply administrative 
divisions of a single empire ; but we may properly enough speak of the Roman 
Empire in the West, and the Roman Empire in the East, or of the Western and 
Eastern emperors. What it is very essential to note is, that the restoration of the 
line of the Western emperors actually destroyed the unity of the old Empire, so that 
from this time on until the destruction of the Eastern Empire in 1453, there were, 
as we have said in the text, two rival emperors, each in theory having rightful 
suzerainty of the whole world, whereas the two emperors in Roman times were 
the co-rulers of a single and indivisible World Empire. See Bryce's The Holy 
Roman Empire. 

'- In the autumn (here gathered a second smaller assembly, or council, which was 
composed solely of the magnates of the Empire and the chief royal advisers. 



64 CHARLEMAGNE [§ 75 

Emperor advice and information. Its relation to Charlemagne 
is well shown by the words with which he is represented as having 
once addressed one of its meetings: "Counsel me," he said, 
"that I may know what to do." 

In connection with the General Assembly we should notice 
the celebrated Capitularies of Charlemagne. These were not laws 
proper, but collections of decrees, decisions, and instructions 
covering matters of every kind, civil and religious, public and 
domestic. Some of them were drawn up with the concurrence 
of the Diet; a greater number embodied simply Charlemagne's 
own ideas of what his chiefs or his subjects needed in the way of 
advice, suggestion, or command. 

Another noteworthy feature of the government of Charlemagne 
was the itinerant commissioners {niissi doniinki), whose duty it 
was to visit at stated intervals all parts of a given circuit, observe 
how the local magistrates were discharging their several duties, 
correct what was wrong, and report to the Emperor all matters 
of which he should be informed. This was an admirable device 
for putting the head of the vast Empire in close and almost 
personal touch with all its parts near and remote. 

Charlemagne, particularly after his coronation as Emperor, 
exercised as careful a superintendence over religious as over civil 
affairs. He called synods or councils of the clergy of his domin- 
ions, presided at these meetings, revised the canons of the Church, 
and addressed to abbots and bishops fatherly words of admoni- 
tion, reproof, and exhortation. 

Education was also a matter to which Charlemagne gave zealous 
attention. He was himself from first to last as diligent a student 
as his busy life permitted. His biographer, Einhard, says that he 
could repeat his prayers as well in Latin as in German, and that 
he understood Greek, although he had difficulty in its pronuncia- 
tion. He never ceased to be a learner. In his old age he tried 
to learn to write, but found that it was too late. 

Distressed by the dense ignorance all about him, Charlemagne 
labored to instruct his Subjects, lay and clerical, by the establish- 
ment of schools and the multiplication and dissemination of books 



§ 76] CHARLEMAGNE'S PLACE IN HISTORY 65 

through the agency of the copyists of the monasteries. He invited 
from England the celebrated Alcuin, one of the finest scholars of 
the age, and with his help organized what became known as the 
Palace School, in which his children and courtiers and he himself 
were pupils. A spirit of rare comradeship seems to have pervaded 
this happy school. The different members of it were in pleasantry 
given Hebrew or classical names. Charlemagne was known as 
King David; Alcuin, as Flaccus; while still others bore the names 
of Homer, Pindar, Samuel, Columba, and Jeremiah. 

A great number of other schools were established by Charle- 
magne in connection with the cathedrals and monasteries through- 
out his dominions. In causing the establishment of these schools 
Charlemagne set at work influences that left a deep and per- 
manent impression upon European civilization. They mark the 
beginning of a new intellectual life for Western Christendom. 

76. The Death of Charlemagne (814) ; his Place in History. 
Charlemagne enjoyed the imperial dignity only fourteen years, 
dying in 814. By the almost universal verdict of students of the 
mediaeval period, he has been pronounced the most imposing per- 
sonage that appears between the fall of Rome and the fifteenth 
century. ''He stands alone," says Hallam, ''like a beacon upon 
a waste, or a rock in the broad ocean." He is the King Arthur 
of the French, — the favorite hero of mediaeval minstrelsy. His 
greatness has erected an enduring monument for itself in his 
name, the one by which he is best known, — Charlemagne. 

77. The Results of his Reign. Among the many results of 
the reign of Charlemagne we should take notice of the three fol- 
lowing. First, he did for Germany what Caesar did for Gaul, — 
brought this barbarian land within the pale of civilization and 
made it a part of the new-forming Romano-Teutonic world. 

Second, through the part he played in the revival of the 
Empire, he helped to give to the following generations "a great 
political ideal" — the ideal of a world empire — and to set up an 
authority among the European princes which was destined to 
lend character to large sections of mediaeval history.^ 

1 See Chapter XI, 



66 CHARLEMAGNE [§ 78 

Third, Charlemagne kneaded into something like a homogene- 
ous mass the various racial elements composing the mixed society 
of the wide regions over which he ruled. Throughout his long and 
vigorous reign that fusion of Roman and Teuton of which we 
spoke in a previous chapter went on apace. He failed, indeed, to 
iinite the various races of his extended dominions in a permanent 
political union, but he did much to create among them those reli- 
gious, intellectual, and social bonds which were never afterwards 
severed. From his time on, as it has been concisely expressed, 
there was a Western Christendom. 

78. Division of the Empire; the Treaty of Verdun (843). 
Like the kingdom of Alexander and that of many another great 
conqueror, the mighty empire of Charlemagne fell to pieces soon 
after his death. ''His scepter was the bow of Ulysses which 
could not be drawn by any weaker hand." 

Charlemagne was followed by his son Lewis, surnamed the 
Pious (814-840). Upon the death of Lewis fierce contention 
broke out among his surviving sons, Lewis, Charles, and Lothair, 
and myriads of lives were sacrificed in the unnatural strife. 
Finally, by the famous Treaty of Verdun (843), the Empire was 
divided as follows: to Lewis was given the part east of the Rhine, 
the nucleus of the later Germany ; to Charles, the part west of the 
Rhone and the INIeuse, one day to become France; and to 
Lothair, the narrow central strip between these, stretching across 
Europe from the North Sea to the Mediterranean, and including 
the rich lands of the lower Rhine, the valley of the Rhone, and 
Italy. To Lothair also was given the imperial title. 

This treaty is celebrated, not only because it was the first great 
treaty among the European states but also on account of its 
marking the divergence from one another, and in some sense the 
origin, of two of the great nations of modern Europe, — Teutonic 
Germany and Romanic France. As shown by the celebrated 
bilingual oath of Strassburg,^ there had by this time grown up 

1 This was an oath of friendship and mutual fidelity taken by Lewis and Charles 
just before the Treaty of Verdun (in 842). The text of the oath has been preserved 
both in the old German speech and in the new-forming Romance language. It is 
interesting as affording the oldest existing specimens of these languages. 



>< 79] THE EMPIRE AND OTTO THE GREAT 67 

in Gaul, through the mixture of the provincial Latin with Ger- 
man elements, a new speech, which was to grow into the French 
tongue, — the firstborn of the Romance languages.^ 

79. Renewal of the Empire by Otto the Great (962). In 
the division of the dominions of Charlemagne, the imperial title, as 
we have just seen, went to Lothair. The title, however, meant 
scarcely anything, carrying with it little or no real authority. 
Matters ran on thus for more than a century, the empty honor 
of the title sometimes being enjoyed by the kings of Italy, and 
again by those of the Eastern Franks. 

But with the accession of Otto I to the throne of Germany 
in the year 936, there appeared among the princes of Europe 
a second Charlemagne. Besides being king of Germany, he 
became, through interference on request in the affairs of Italy, 
king of that country also. Furthermore, he wrested large tracts 
of land from the Slavs, and forced the Danes, Poles, and Hunga- 
rians to acknowledge his suzerainty. Thus favored by fortune, he 
conceived the idea of reviving once more the imperial authority, 
just as it had been revived in the time of the great Charles. 

So in 962, just a little more than a century and a half after 
the coronation at Rome of Charlemagne, Otto, at the same place 
and by the same papal authority, was crowned Emperor of the 
Romans. For a generation no one had borne the title. From 
this time on it was the rule that the prince whom the German 
Electors chose as their king had a right to the crown of Italy and 
also to the imperial crown. 

After this the Empire came to be called the Holy Roman 
Empire, although, as Voltaire very truthfully observed concern- 
ing it later, it was ''neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire." 
Respecting the great part that the idea of the Empire played in 
subsequent history we shall speak in a later chapter (Chapter XI) . 

Selections from the Sources. Eginhard (Einhard), Life of the Emperor 
Karl the Great (translation by William Glaister recommended). (Einhard was 
Charles' confidential friend and secretary. "Almost all our real, vivifying 
knowledge of Charles the Great," says Hodgkin, " is derived from Einhard, 

1 Compare sect. 44. 



68 CHARLEMAGNE 

and . . . the Ilia Camli is one of the most precious bequests of the early 
Middle Ages.") Translations and Reprints (University of Pennsylvania), vol. vi, 
No. 5, "Selections from the Laws of Charles the Great." Robinson, J. H., 
Readings^ vol. i, chap. vii. 

References (Modern). IIuIjgkjn, T., Charles the drat, and Mombekt, J. I., 
History of Charles the Great (the first is the best short biography in English). 
Bryce, J., The Holy Roi/ian Empire, chaps, iv, v (gives a clear view of the 
import of the restoration of the Empire). EmertoiN, E., Introduction to the 
Middle Ages, chaps, xii-xiv. Serge.'VNT, L., The Franks, chaps, xvi-xxii (an 
admirable sketch, with a moderate appraisement of Charles' work). West, 
A. F., Alcnin and the Rise of the Christian Schools, and Mullinger, J. B., The 
Schools of Charles the Great. Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle 
Ages, chap. vii. The Cambridge Mediei'al History, vol. ii, chaps, xviii, xix, xxi. 
D.A.VIS, H. W. C, Charlemagne. 

Topics for Class Reports, i . Charlemagne and his court : Davis, H. W. C, 
Charlemagne, chap. x. 2. A letter of Charlemagne summoning an abbot with 
his men to a general assembly : Ogg, F. A., Source Book of Medicvval Histoiy, 
pp. 141-144. 3. Alcuin and the Palace School: West. A. F., Alcuin and the 
Rise of the Christian Schools, chap. iii. 4. The import of the restoration of 
the Empire : Bryce, J., The Holy Roman Empire (Sth ed.), chaps, iv, v, xxi 
(a subject for the advanced student). 5. The things needed to be done, 
which Charlemagne did : Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 
pp. 154-169. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE NORTHMEN: THE COMING OF THE VIKINGS 

80. The Northern Folk. Northmen, Norsemen, Scandina- 
vians, are different names applied in a general way to the early 
inhabitants of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. For the reason 
that those making settlements in England came for the most part 
from Denmark, the term Danes is often used with the same wide 




Fig. io. A Viking Ship 

It was the custom of the Northmen to bury their dead sea-king near the sea in his ship 

and over the spot to raise a great mound of earth. The boat shown in the cut was found 

in 1880 in a burial mound at Gokstad, South Norway. Its length is 78 feet. From the 

mode of sepulture it is inferred that the mound was raised between A. d. 700 and 1000 

application by the English writers. These people were very near 
kin to those tribes— Goths, Vandals, Franks, Anglo-Saxons, and 
the rest — ^that seized upon the western provinces of the Roman 
Empire. They were Teutons in language, habits, and spirit. 

81. The Northmen as Pirates and as Colonizers. For the 
first eight centuries of our era the Norsemen are practically hid- 
den from our view in their remote northern home; but towards 
the end of the eighth century their black piratical crafts are to be 
seen creeping along the coasts of Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and 
even venturing far up the inlets and creeks. 

69 



70 



THE NORTHMEN 



[§81 



Every summer these dreaded sea rovers made swift descents 
upon the exposed shores of these countries, plundered, burned, 
murdered; and then upon the approach of the stormy season 
they returned to winter in the sheltered fiords of the northern 
peninsulas. After a time the bold corsairs began to winter in the 
lands they had harried during the summer; and soon all the 
shores of the countries visited were dotted with their stations 
and settlements. With a foothold once secured, fresh bands came 
from the crowded lands of the north; the winter stations grew 

into permanent 
colonies; the sur- 
rounding country 
was gradually 
wrested from the 
natives; and in 
course of time 
the settlements 
coalesced into a 
real kingdom. 

Commencing 
in the latter part 
of the eighth 
century, these 
marauding expe- 
ditions and colonizing enterprises did not cease until the eleventh 
century was far advanced. The consequences of this wonderful 
outpouring of the Scandinavian peoples were so important and 
lasting that the movement may well be compared, as it has been, 
to the great migration of their German kinsmen in the fifth and 
sixth centuries. Europe is a second time inundated by the 
Teutonic barbarians. 

The most noteworthy characteristic of these Northmen is the 
readiness with which they laid aside their own manners, habits, 
ideas, and institutions, and adopted those of the country in which 
they established themselves. "In Russia they became Russians; 
in France, Frenchmen ; in Italy, Italians ; in England, Englishmen." 




Discoveries of the Northmen 



§82] SETTLEMENTS OF THE NORTHMEN 71 

82. Colonization of Iceland and Greenland; the Discovery 
of America. Iceland was settled by the Northmen in the ninth 
century, and about a century later Greenland was discovered 
and colonized. In 1874 the Icelanders celebrated the thousandth 
anniversary of the settlement of their island. Iceland became the 
literary center of the Scandinavian world — -"the Greece of the 
North," it has been called. There grew up here a class of scalds, 
or bards, who, before the introduction of writing, preserved and 
transmitted orally the sagas, or legends, of the Northern races. 
About the middle of the thirteenth century these poems and 
legends were gathered into collections known as the Elder or 
Poetic Edda, and the Younger or Prose Edda. These are among 
the most interesting and important of the literary memorials that 
we possess of the early Teutonic peoples. They reflect faithfully 
the beliefs, manners, and customs of the Norsemen, and the wild 
adventurous spirit of their sea-kings. 

America was reached by the Northmen as early as the open- 
ing of the eleventh century; the "Vinland" of their traditions 
was probably some part of the New England coast. Whether 
these first visitors to the continent ever made any settlements in 
the new land is a disputed question. 

83. The Norsemen in Russia. While the Norwegians were 
sailing boldly out into the Atlantic and taking possession of the 
isles and coasts of the western seas, the Swedes were pushing their 
crafts across the Baltic and troubling the Finns and Slavs on the 
eastern shore of that sea. Either by right of conquest or through 
the invitation of the contentious Slavonic clans, the renowned 
Scandinavian chieftain Ruric acquired, about the middle of the 
ninth century, kingly dignity, and became the founder of the 
first royal line of Russia. 

84. The Danish Conquest of England; Alfred the Great 
and Canute. The Northmen — Danes, as called by the English 
writers — began to make descents upon the English coast toward 
the close of the eighth century. These sea rovers spread the 
greatest terror throughout the island; for they were not content 
with plunder, but, being pagans, took special delight in burning 



72 THE NORTHMEN [§84 

the churches and monasteries of the now Christian Anglo-Saxons, 
or English, as we shall hereafter call them. In a short time fully 
one half of England was in their hands. The wretched English 
were subjected to exactly the same treatment that they had 
inflicted upon the Celts. Just when it began to look as though 
they would be wholly enslaved or driven from the island by the 
heathen intruders, Alfred (871-901), later to be known as Alfred 
the Great, came to the throne of Wessex. 

For six years the youthful king fought heroically at the head 
of his brave thanes; but each year the possessions of the English 
grew smaller, and finally Alfred and his few remaining followers 
were forced to take refuge in the woods and morasses. After a 
time, however, the affairs of Alfred began to mend. He gained 
some advantage over the Danes, but he could not expel them 
from the island, and by the celebrated Treaty of Wedmore (878) 
gave up to them all the northeastern part of England. 

Alfred's best claim to the title of Great that has been conferred 
upon him springs from his work as a lawgiver and a patron of 
learning. He collected and revised the ancient laws of the Anglo- 
Saxons, tempering and altering them in accordance with Chris- 
tian morals and principles. The code that he thus made formed 
the basis of early English jurisprudence. Alfred also fostered 
learning by becoming himself a translator. With the exception 
of the Bible, some short poems, and the well-known Paraphrase 
of the Scriptures (sect. 21), the translations by Alfred were the 
first books written in their own tongue that the English had 
placed in their hands. Here we have the beginnings of the prose 
literature of England. ''The mighty roll of the prose books that 
fill her libraries," writes Green, "begins with the translations of 
Alfred, and above all with the Chronicle of his reign." ^ 

For a full century following the death of Alfred his successors 
were engaged in a constant struggle to hold in restraint the Danes 



1 The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle here alluded to was a minute and chronological record 
of events, probably begun in syslcmafic form in Alfred's reign and continued down to 
the year ii=;4- It was kept by the monks of different monasteries, and forms one of 
our most valuable sources for early English history. 



THE DAIN^ELAAV. 




§85] 



THE NORTHMEN IN GAUL 



73 



already settled in the land, or to protect their domains from the 
plundering inroads of fresh bands of pirates from the northern 
peninsulas. In the end the Danes got the victory, and Canute, 
king of Denmark, became king of England (1016). For eighteen 
years he reigned in a wise and parental 
way. 

Altogether the Danes ruled in England 
about a quarter of a century, and then 
the old English line was restored in the 
person of Edward the Confessor (1042 ) . 

85. Settlement of the Northmen in 
Gaul. The Northmen began to make 
piratical descents upon the coasts of 
Gaul before the end of the reign of 
Charlemagne. The great king had been 
dead only thirty years when these sea 
rovers ascended the Seine and sacked 
Paris. At last the Carolingian king, 
Charles the Simple, did something very 
like what Alfred the Great had done 
across the Channel only a short time 
before. He granted to Rollo, the leader 
of the Northmen who had settled at 
Rouen, a considerable section of coun- 
try in the north of Gaul, upon con- 
dition of homage and conversion (911). In a short time the new- 
comers had adopted the language, the manners, and the religion 
of the French, and had caught much of their vivacity and impul- 
siveness of spirit, without, however, any loss of their own native 
virtues. This transformation in their manners and life we may 
conceive as being recorded in their transformed name, — North- 
men becoming softened into Norman. 

86. Normandy in French History. The establishment of a 
Scandinavian settlement in Gaul proved a most momentous mat- 
ter, not only for the history of the French people but for the 
history of European civilization as well. This Norse factor was 




Fig. II. Rollo. (From the 
monument at Rouen) 



74 THE NORTHMEN [§ 86 

destined to be one of the most important of all those various 
racial elements which on the soil of the old Gaul blended to 
create the richly dowered French nation. For many of the most 
romantic passages of her history France is indebted to the adven- 
turous spirit of the descendants of these wild rovers of the sea. 
The knights of Normandy lent an added splendor to French 
knighthood, and helped greatly to make France the hearth of 
chivalry and the center of the crusading movement of the 
eleventh and twelfth centuries. 

Nor was the influence of the incoming of this Scandinavian 
race felt upon French history alone. Normandy became the 
point of departure of enterprises that had deep and lasting con- 
sequences for Europe at large. These undertakings had for their 
arena England and the Mediterranean lands. Their results were 
so important and far-reaching that we shall devote to the nar- 
ration of them a subsequent chapter (Chapter X). 

Selections from the Sources. The Story of Burnt Xjal (trans, by George W. 
Dasent). An Icelandic saga; a picture of times and manners. Asseu, The 
Life of A'ing Alfred (ed. by W. H. Stevenson). Kendall, E. K., Source- Took, 
chap, ii, " England and the Danes." 

References (Modern). Keary, C. F., The Vikings in Hester// Christendom 
(depicts the various Viking undertakings as " one phase ... of the long 
struggle between Christianity and the heathenism of the North "). Pauli, R., 
The Life of Alfred the Great (the best life of the great king). Green, J. R., 
The Conquest of England; all excepting chaps, x and xi. Du Chaii.i.u, 
P. B., The Viking Age, 2 vols, (reflects the life and ideals, customs and manners 
of the Norsemen). Macfadyen, D., Alfred, the JJest Saxon. Boyesen, Ii. H., 
The Sto7y of Nonvay; the opening chapters. Mawer, A., The Vikings. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Voyages of the Northmen to America: 
Fiske, J., The Discovery of America, vol. i, chap. ii. 2. The Siege of Paris by 
the Northmen: Ogg, F. A., Source Book of ]\Iediir7<al History, pp. 16S-171. 
3. Rollo (Rolf): Jewett, S. O., Story of the NoHhmen, chap. ii. 4. .Alfred's 
interest in learning : Ogg, F. A., Source Book of Mediceval History, pp. 1S5-195 ; 
Colby, C. W., Selections, pp. 19-22. 



SECOND PERIOD— THE AGE OF REVIVAL 

(From the Opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of America 
by Columbus in 1492) 



CHAPTER IX 

FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY 

I. FEUDALISM 

87. Feudalism defined. Feudalism is the name given to a 
special form of society and government which prevailed in Europe 
during the latter part of the Middle Ages, attaining, hov^^ever, 
its most perfect development in the eleventh, twelfth, and 
thirteenth centuries. 

The three most essential features of the system were (i) the 
holding of land from a lord or superior; (2) the existence of a 
close personal bond between the grantor of an estate and the 
receiver of it; (3) the full or partial rights of sovereignty which 
the holder of an estate had over those living upon it. 

An estate of this nature — it might embrace a few acres or 
an entire kingdom — was called a fief, or feud, whence the term 
Feudalism. The person granting a fief was called the suzerain, 
liege, or lord; the one receiving it his vassal, liegeman, or retainer. 

A person receiving a large fief might parcel it out in tracts 
to others on terms similar to those on which he himself had 
received it. This regranting of feudal lands was known as subin- 
jeitdation; in principle it was not unlike what we know as the 
subletting of lands. The process of subinfeudation might be 
carried to almost any degree. Practically it was seldom carried 
beyond the fourth stage. 

75 



76 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§88 

88. The Ideal System. The few definitions given above will 
render intelligible the following explanation of the theory of the 
feudal system. We take the theory of the system first for the 
reason that it is infinitely simpler than the thing itself. In fact, 
feudalism, as we find it in actual practice, was one of the most 
complex institutions that the mediaeval ages produced. 

In theory all the kings of the earth were vassals of the Emperor, 
who according to good imperialists was God's vassal, and accord- 
ing to good churchmen, the Pope's. The kings received their 
dominions as fiefs to be held on conditions of loyalty to their 
suzerain and of fealty to right and justice. Should a king become 
disloyal or rule unjustly and wickedly, through such misconduct 
he forfeited his fief, and it might be taken from him by his 
suzerain and given to another and worthier liegeman. 

In the same way as the king received his fief from the Emperor, 
so might he grant it out in parcels to his chief men, they, in return 
for it, promising, in general, to be faithful to him as their lord 
and to serve and aid him. In like manner these immediate vassals 
of the king, or suzerain, might parcel out their domains in smaller 
tracts to others, on like conditions; and so on down through any 
number of stages. 

We have thus far dealt only with the soil of a country. We 
must next notice what disposition was made of the people under 
this system. The king in receiving his fief was intrusted with 
sovereignty over all persons living upon it; he became their 
commander, their lawmaker, and their judge, — practically, their 
absolute and irresponsible ruler. Then, when he parceled out his 
fief among his great men, he invested them, within the limits of 
the fiefs granted, with all his own sovereign rights. Each vassal 
became a virtual sovereign in his own domain. And when these 
great vassals subdivided their fiefs and granted parcels to others, 
they in turn invested their vassals with more or less of those powers 
of sovereignty with which they themselves had been clothed.^ 

1 The holders of small fiefs were not allowed to exercise the more important 
functions of sovereignty. Thus, of the estimated number of 70,000 fief holders in 
France in the tenth century, only between 100 and 200 possessed the right "to coin 
money, levy taxes, make laws, and administer their own justice." 



§S9] 



THE CEREMONY OF HOMAGE 



77 



To illustrate the workings of the system, we will suppose the 
king, or suzerain, to be in need of an army. He calls upon his own 
immediate vassals for aid; these in turn call upon their vassals; 
and so the order runs down through the various ranks of retain- 
ers. The retainers in the lowest rank rally around their respective 
lords, who, with their bands, gather about their lords, and so on 
up through the rising tiers of the system, until the immediate 
vassals of the suzerain, or lord paramount, present themselves 
before him with their graduated trains of followers. The array 
constitutes a feudal army, — a splendidly organized body in theory, 
but in reality an extremely poor 
instrument for warfare. 

Such was the ideal feudal state. 
It is needless to say that the ideal 
was never perfectly realized. The 
system simply made more or less 
distant approaches to it in the 
several European countries. But 
this general idea which we have 
tried to give of the theory of 
the system will help to an under- 
standing of it as we find it in actual 
existence. 

89. The Ceremony of Homage, 
very solemn and peculiar ceremon}- called homage. The person 
about to become a vassal, kneeling, placed his hands in those of 
his future lord and solemnly vowed to be henceforth his man ' and 
to serve him faithfully even with his life. This part of the 
ceremony, sealed with a kiss, was what properly constituted the 
ceremony of homage. It was accompanied by an oath of fealty, 
and the whole was concluded by the act of investiture, whereby 
the lord put his vassal in actual possession of the land, or, by 
placing in his hand a clod of earth or a twig, symbolized the 
delivery to him of the estate for which he had just now done 
homage and sworn fealty. 

1 Latin homo, whence " homage." 




Fk;. 12. The Ceremonv of 

Homage. (From a seal of the 

twelfth century) 

A fief was conferred by a 



78 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§ 90 

90. The Relations of Lord and VassaL In general terms the 
duty of the vassal was service; that of the lord, protection. The 
most honorable service required of the vassal, and the one most 
willingly rendered in a martial age, was military aid. The liege- 
man must always be ready to follow his lord upon his military ex- 
peditions; but the time of service for one year was usually not more 
than forty days. He must defend his lord in battle; if he should 
be unhorsed, he must give him his own animal; and if he should 
be made a prisoner, he must offer himself as a hostage for his 
release. He must also give entertainment to his lord and his retinue 
on their journeys. He was, moreover, under obligation, upon sum- 
mons, to serve as juror or judge in the lord's court, and thus aid 
him in the settlement of disputes between his vassals. 

There were other incidents, mainly of a financial nature attach- 
ing to a fief, which grew up gradually and did not become a part 
of the system much before the eleventh century. These were 
known as Reliejs, Fines upon Alienation, Escheats, and Aids. 

A Relief was the name given to the sum of money which an 
heir upon coming into possession of a fief must pay to the lord 
of the domain. This was often a large amount, being usually the 
entire revenue of the estate for one year. 

A Fine upon Alienation was a sum of money paid to the lord 
by a vassal for permission to alienate his fief, that is, to substitute 
another vassal in his place. 

By Escheat was meant the falling back of the fief into the 
hands of the lord through failure of heirs. If the fief lapsed 
through disloyalty or other misdemeanor on the part of the vassal, 
this was known as Forfeiture. 

Aids were sums of money which the lord had a right to demand 
to enable him to meet unusual expenditures, especially for defray- 
ing the expense of knighting his eldest son, for providing a mar- 
riage dower for his eldest daughter, and for ransoming his own 
person from captivity in case he were made a prisoner of war.^ 

1 The right of wardship was the right of the lord, when a successor to a fief 
was a minor, to assume the guardianship of the heir and to enjoy the revenues of the 
fief until his ward became of age. The right of marriage was the right of the lord to 
select a husband for his female ward. 




Photograph of an Open Field in Hitchin Manor 

Showing the grassy balks, or unplowed furrows, which take the place of hedges 
and divide the acre and half-acre strips of the great open field 

* This map is based on charts in Secbohm's The English Village Communiiy, and 
illustrates the open-field system of cultivation of the mediaeval manor. The thirty scattered 
strips colored red represent tlie normal holding of a villain (-villanus) ; the strips colored 
blue, comprising about one thud of the land of the manor, show tlie way in which the 
demesne of the lord was often made up of numerous tracts scattered about the open fields 
instead of forming a continuous tract around the manor house ; the areas colored green 
represent the meadows and common pasture lands. 



§ 91] SERF5 AND SERFDOM 79 

The chief return that the lord was bound to make to the vassal 
as a compensation for these various services and rights was justice 
and protection,- — by no means a small return in an age of turmoil 
and insecurity. 

91. Serfs ^ and Serfdom. The vassals, or fief holders of vari- 
ous grades, constituted only a very small portion, perhaps five per 
cent or less, of the population of the countries where feudalism 
came to prevail. The great bulk of the folk were agricultural 
serfs." These were the men who actually tilled the soil. Just 
how this servile class arose is not positively known. In some 
countries at least they seem to have been the lineal descendants of 
the slaves of Roman times, whose condition had been gradually 
improved. Their status varied greatly from country to country 
and from period to period ; that is to say, there came to be many 
grades of serfs filling the space between the actual slave and the 
full freeman. Consequently it is impossible to give any general 
account of the class which can be regarded as a true picture of 
their actual condition as a body at any given time. The following 
description must therefore be taken as reflecting their duties and 
disabilities only in the most general way. 

The first and most characteristic feature of the condition of 
the serfs was that they were affixed to the soil. They could not 
of their own will leave the estate, or manor, to which they be- 
longed; nor, on the other hand, could their lord deprive them of 
their holdings and set them adrift. When the land changed 
masters they passed with it, just like a "rooted tree or stone 
earth-bound." It was this that constituted the peasants serfs in 
the sense in which we shall use the term. 

1 The terms serf and villain, although in some countries they denoted different 
classes, are used interchangeably by many writers. Thus English writers usually 
employ the terms villains and villanage in speaking of the servile English peasantry 
after the Norman Conquest. We shall, however, throughout our work use the words 
serf&nii. serfdom only in the sense defined in the present paragraph. 

2 There were some free peasants and a large number of free artisans and traders,, 
inhabitants of the towns. The number of actual slaves was small. They had almost all 
disappeared before the end of the tenth century, either having been emancipated or 
been lifted into the lowest order of serfs, which was an advance toward freedom. 
At the time of the great Domesday survey (sect, no) there were, according to this 
record, only about 25,000 slaves in England. 



8o FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§91 

Each serf had allotted him by his lord a cottage and a few 
acres of land, — thirty acres formed a normal holding, — consist- 
ing of numerous narrow strips scattered about the great open 
fields of the manor. For these he paid a rent, usually during 
earlier feudal times in kind and in personal services. The personal 
services included a certain number of days' work, usually two or 
three days each week, on the demesne, that is, the land which 
the lord had kept in his own hands as a sort of home farm. The 
nature of the work consisted in ploughing the lord's land, tilling 
and weeding his crops, ditching, building walls, repairing roads 
and bridges, cutting and hauling wood to the manor house, wash- 
ing and shearing sheep, feeding the hounds, and picking nuts and 
wild berries for the folk in the castle. Often the poor serf could 
find time to till his own little plot only on moonlit nights or on 
rainy days. He must furthermore grind his grain at his lord's 
mill, press his grapes at his wine press, bake his bread at his 
oven, often paying for these services an unreasonable toll. 

After the serf had rendered to the lord all the rent in kind he 
owed for his cottage and bit of ground, the remainder of the 
produce from his fields was, in accordance with custom if not 
always with law, his own. Generally the share was only just 
sufficient to keep the wolf of hunger from his door. Some serfs, 
however, were able to accumulate considerable personal property. 

In some countries upon the death of the serf all that he had 
became in the eye of the law the property of his lord; in other 
lands, again, the lord could take only the best animal or the best 
implement of the deceased serf. This was called the heriot. 

Besides all these payments, services, gifts, and dues, there were 
often others of a whimsical and teasing rather than an oppressive 
nature. But of these we need not now speak. What we have 
already said will convey some idea of the nature of the relations 
that existed between the lord and his serf and will indicate how 
servile and burdensome were the incidents of the tenure by which 
the serf held his cottage and bit of ground. How the serf gradu- 
ally freed himself from the heavy yoke of his servitude and became 
a freeman will appear as we advance in our narrative. 



§92] DEVELOPMENT OF FEUDALISM 8l 

92. Development of the Feudal System. Although the germs 
of feudalism may be found in the society of the fifth or sixth cen- 
tury, still the development of the system had not proceeded to the 
point where it exhibited its characteristic features before the 
eighth or ninth. 

What greatly contributed to the development of feudalism, par- 
ticularly^ on its military side, was the means adopted by Charles 
Martel, after the battle of Tours, to repel the continued raids of 
the Arab horsemen into southern Gaul. Foot soldiers being useless 
in the pursuit of the mounted marauders, Charles created a cav- 
alry force, appropriating for this purpose Church lands which he 
granted in fief to meet the cost of service on horseback. This 
was the opening of the day of feudal chivalry (sect. 98). Gradu- 
ally the old general levies of foot soldiers were almost wholly 
superseded by arrays of feudal knights. 

This development of feudalism as a defensive military system 
and in the typical form which it had now assumed in the Gallic 
border land between Saracen and Christian was hastened by the 
disturbed state of society everywhere during the greater part of 
the ninth and the tenth century, for after the death of Charle- 
magne and the partition of his empire among his feeble successors, 
it appeared as though the world were again falling back into 
chaos. The bonds of society seemed entirely broken. Every man 
did that which was right in his own eyes. 

To internal disorders were added the invasions of the outside 
barbarians; for, no longer held in restraint by the strong arm of 
the great Charles, they had now begun their raids anew. From 
the north came the Scandinavian pirates to harry the shores of 
Germany, Gaul, and Britain. The terror which these pagan sea 
rovers inspired is commemorated by the supplication of the litany 
of those days: "From the fury of the Northmen, good lord, 
deliver us." From the east came the terrible Hungarians. These 
pagan marauders not only devastated Germany but troubled south- 
ern France and, passing the Alps, spread before them a terror like 
that which had run before the Huns nearly five hundred years 
earlier. 



82 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§ 92 

By the way of the sea on the south came an equally dreaded 
foe. The Saracens, now intrenched in Spain and Sicily, made 
piratical descents upon all the Christian shores of the western 
and middle Mediterranean, sacking and burning, and creating 
here such panic and dismay as the Northmen and Hungarians 
were creating at this same time by their irruptions in the north 
and east. 

It was this anarchical state of things that, as we have said-, 
caused the rapid development of feudalism. All classes hastened 
to enter the system in order to secure the protection which it 
alone could afford. Kings, princes, and wealthy persons who had 
large landed possessions which they had never parceled out as 
fiefs were now led to do so, that their estates might be held by 
tenants bound to protect them by all the sacred obligations of 
homage and fealty. Thus sovereigns and princes became suze- 
rains and feudal lords. Again, the smaller proprietors who held 
their estates by freehold tenure voluntarily surrendered them into 
the hands of some neighboring lord, and then received them back 
again from him as liefs, that they might claim protection as 
vassals. They deemed this better than being robbed of their 
property altogether. 

Moreover, for like reasons and in like manner, churches, mon- 
asteries, and cities became members of the feudal system. They 
granted out their vast possessions as fiefs, and thus became suze- 
rains and lords. Bishops and abbots became the heads of great 
bands of retainers, and often themselves led military expeditions 
like temporal chiefs. On the other hand, these same monasteries 
and towns frequently placed themselves under the protection 
of some powerful lord, and thus came in vassalage to him. Some- 
times the bishops and the heads of religious houses, instead of 
paying military service, bound themselves to say a certain number 
of Masses for the lord or his family. 

In this way were Church and State, all classes of society from 
the wealthiest suzerain to the humblest vassal, bound together 
by feudal ties. Everything was impressed with the stamp of 
feudalism. 



§93] 



CASTLES OF THE NOBLES 



83 



93. Castles of the Nobles. The lawless and violent character 
of the times during which feudalism prevailed is well shown by 
the nature of the residences which the great nobles built for 
themselves. These were strong stone fortresses, often perched upon 
almost inaccessible mountain crags. France, Germany, Italy, 
northern Spain, England, and Scotland, in which countries the 
feudal system became most thoroughly developed, fairly bristled 
with these fortified residences of the nobility. Strong walls were 
the only protection against the universal violence of the age. 




Fig. 13. Typical Medi/Eval Castle 

One of the most striking and picturesque features of the land- 
scape of many regions in Europe to-day is the ivy-mantled towers 
and walls of these feudal castles, now falling into ruins. They 
are impressive memorials of an age that has passed away. 

94. Sports of the Nobles; Hunting and Hawking. When 
not engaged in military enterprises, the nobles occupied much of 
their time in hunting and hawking. "With the northern barba- 
rians," writes Hallam, "it [hunting] was rather a predominant 
appetite than an amusement; it was their pride and their orna- 
ment, the theme of their songs, the object of their laws, and the 
business of their lives." It was the forest laws of the Norman 
conquerors of England, designed for the protection of the game in 



84 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§95 

the royal preserves, which, perhaps more than anything else, 
caused these foreign rulers to be so bitterly hated by the English 
(sect. III). 

Abbots and bishops entered upon the chase with as great zest 
as the lay nobles. Even the prohibitions of Church councils 
against the clergy's indulging in such worldly amusements were 
wholly ineffectual. 

Hawking grew into a very passion among all classes, even 
ladies participating in the sport. In the celebrated tapestries 
and upon all the monuments of the feudal age, the greyhound 
and the falcon, the dog lying at the feet of his master and the 
bird perched upon his wrist, are, after the knightly sword and 
armor, the most common emblems of nobility. 

95. Causes of the Decay of Feudalism. Chief among the 
various causes which undermined and at length overthrew feudal- 
ism were the hostility of the kings and the common people to the 
system, the Crusades, the growth of the cities, and the introduc- 
tion of firearms in the art of war. 

The feudal system was' hated and opposed by both the royal 
power and the people. In fact, it was never regarded with much 
favor by any class save the nobles, who enjoyed its advantages 
at the expense of all the other orders of society. Kings opposed 
it and sought to break it down because it left them only the 
semblance of power. We shall see later how the kings came 
again into their own (Chapter XVII). 

The common people hated it for the reason that under 
it they were regarded as of less value than the game in the lord's 
hunting park. The record of their struggles for recognition in 
society and a participation in the privileges of the haughty feudal 
aristocracy forms the most interesting and instructive portions of 
mediaeval and even of later history. 

The Crusades, or Holy Wars, that agitated all Europe during 
the twelfth and thirteenth centuries did much to weaken the 
power of the nobles; for in order to raise money for their expe- 
ditions they frequently sold or mortgaged their estates, and in 
this way power and influence passed into the hands of the kings 



§96] DEFECTS OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM 85 

or the wealthy merchants of the cities. Many of the great nobles 
also perished in battle with the infidels, and their lands escheated 
to their suzerain, whose domains were thus augmented. 

The growth of the towns also tended to the same end. As 
they increased in wealth and influence, the^ became able to resist 
the exactions and tyranny of the lord in whose fief they happened 
to be, and eventually were able to secede, as it were, from his 
authority and to make of themselves little republics. 

Again, improvements and changes in the mode of warfare, 
especially those resulting from the use of gunpowder, hastened 
the downfall of feudalism by rendering the yeoman foot soldier 
equal to the armor-clad knight. "It made all men of the same 
height," as Carhde puts it. The people with muskets in their 
hands could assert and make good their rights. And the castle, 
the body of feudalism, that in which it lived and moved and 
had its being, now became a useless thing. Its walls might bid 
defiance to the mounted, steel-clad baron and his retainers, but 
they could offer little protection against well-trained artillery. 

But it is to be carefully noted that, though feudalism as a 
system of government disappeared, speaking broadly, with the 
Middle Ages,^ it still continued to exist as a social organization. 
The nobles lost their power and authority as petty sovereigns, 
but retained their titles, their privileges, their social distinction, 
and, in many cases, their vast landed estates. 

96. Defects of the Feudal System. Feudalism was perhaps 
the best form of social organization that it was possible to main- 
tain in Europe during the later mediaeval period ; yet it had many 
and serious defects. Among its chief faults may be pointed out 
the two following: first, it rendered impossible the formation of 

1 Different events and circumstances marked the decline and extinction of feudalism 
in the various countries of Europe (Chapter XVII). In England it was the contention 
for the crown, known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-14S5), in which many of the 
nobility were killed or ruined in estate, that gave the deathblow to the institution 
there. The ruin of the system in France may be dated from the establishment 
of a regular standing army by Charles VII (in 1448). The rubbish of the institution, 
however, was not cleared away in that country until the great Revolution of 17S9. 
In Spain the feudal aristocracy received its deathblow at the hands of Ferdinand 
and Isabella, in the latter part of the fifteenth centurj'. 



86 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§ 97 

strong national governments. Every country was divided and 
subdivided into a vast number of practically independent prin- 
cipalities. Thus in the tenth century France was partitioned 
among about a hundred and fifty overlords, all exercising equal 
and coordinate powers of sovereignty. The enormous estates of 
these great lords were again subdivided into about seventy 
thousand smaller fiefs. 

In theory, as we have seen, the holders of these petty estates 
were bound to serve and obey their overlords, and these great 
nobles were in turn the sworn vassals of the French king. But 
many of these lords were richer and stronger than the king him- 
self, and if they chose to cast off their allegiance to him, he found 
it impossible to reduce them to obedience. The king's time was 
chiefly occupied in ineffectual efforts to reduce his haughty and 
unruly nobles to proper submission, and in intervening feebly 
to compose their endless quarrels with one another. It is easy 
to conceive the disorder and wretchedness produced by this state 
of things. 

A second evil of the institution was its exclusiveness. Under 
the workings of the system society became divided into classes 
separated by lines which, though not impassable, were yet very 
rigid, with a proud hereditary aristocracy at its head. It was only 
as the lower classes in the different countries gradually wrested 
from the feudal nobility their special and unfair privileges that a 
better, because more democratic, form of society arose, and civili- 
zation began to make more rapid progress. 

97. The Good Results of Feudalism. The most conspicuous 
service that feudalism rendered European civilization was the 
protection which it gave to society after the break-up of the 
empire of Charles the Great. "It was the mailed feudal 
horseman and the impregnable walls of the feudal castle that 
foiled the attacks of the Danes, the Saracens, and the Hungarians " 
(Oman). 

Feudalism rendered another noteworthy service to society in 
fostering among its privileged members self-reliance and love 
of personal independence. Turbulent, violent, and ungovernable 



§97J 



THE GOOD RESULTS OF FEUDALISM 



87 



as was the feudal aristocracy of Europe, it performed the grand 
service of keeping alive during the later mediaeval period the 
spirit of liberty. The feudal lords would not allow themselves 
to be dealt with arrogantly by their king; they stood on their 
rights as freemen. Hence royalty was prevented from becoming 
as despotic as would otherwise have been the case. Thus in 
England, for instance, the feudal lords held such tyrannical rulers 
as King John in check (sect. 190), until such time as the yeoman 
and the burgher 
were bold enough 
and strong enough 
alone to resist their 
despotically inclined 
sovereigns ; but in 
France, where, un- 
fortunately, resist- 
ance of the feudal 
nobles was broken 
too soon, — before 
the burghers, the 
Third Estate, were 
prepared to take up 
the struggle for lib- 
erty, — the result 
was the growth of 
that autocratic, des- 
potic royalty which 
led the French people to the Revolution arid the Reign of Terror. 
Another of the good effects of feudalism was the irnpulse it 
gave to certain forms of polite literature. Just as learning and 
philosophy were fostered by the seclusion of the cloister, so were 
poetry and romance fostered by the open and joyous hospitalities 
of the baronial hall. The castle door was always open to the 
wandering singer and story-teller, and it was amidst the scenes 
of festivity within that the ballads and romances of mediaeval 
minstrelsy and literature had their birth. 




F'k;. 14. CjKoiu- in the Manor House. (From 
a tapestry of the fourteenth century ; after Greoi) 



88 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§ 98 

Still another service which feudalism rendered to civilization 
was the development within the baronial castle of those ideas 
and sentiments — among others a nice sense of honor and an 
exalted consideration for woman — which found their noblest 
expression in chivalry, of which institution and its good effects 
upon the social life of Europe we shall now proceed to speak. 

IL CHIVALRY 

98. Chivalry defined; Origin of the Institution. Chivalry has 
been aptly defined as the "Flower of Feudalism." It was a mili- 
tary institution or order, the members of which, called knights, 
were pledged to the protection of the Church and to the defense 
of the weak and the oppressed. 

The germ out of which chivalry developed seems to have been 
the body of vassal horsemen which Charles Martel created to 
repel the raids of the Saracens into Aquitaine (sect. 92). It was 
in these border wars that the Franks learned from the Arab 
Moors " to put their trust in horses." From Southern France this 
new military system, in which mounted armor-clad warriors largely 
superseded the earlier foot soldiers, spread over Europe. The 
development was closely connected with that of feudalism; in- 
deed, it was the military side of that development. It became the 
rule that all fief holders must render military service on horseback. 
Fighting on horseback gradually became the normal mode and for 
centuries remained so. 

Gradually this feudal warrior caste underwent a transforma- 
tion. It became in part independent of the feudal system, in so 
far as that had to do with the land, so that any person, if qualified 
by birth and properly initiated, might be a member of the order 
without being the holder of a fief. A great part of the later 
knights were portionless sons of the nobility. 

At the same time the religious spirit of the period entered 
into the order, and it became a Christian brotherhood, some- 
what like the order of the priesthood. Thus, like all other mediaeval 
institutions, chivalry resulted from a union of various elements. 



§ 99] THE CHURCH AND CHIVALRY 89 

Its military forms and spirit came from the side of feudalism; 
its religious forms and spirit, from the side of the Church. What 
actually took place is best illustrated by those military orders of 
monks, the Knights Templars and Knights Hospitalers (sect. 130), 
which came into existence during the Crusades. 

99. Its Universality; the Church and Chivalry. As France 
was the cradle, so was it the true home, of chivalry. Yet its 
influence was felt everywhere and in everything. It colored all 
the events and enterprises of the latter half of the Middle Ages. 
The literature of the period is instinct with its spirit. The Cru- 
sades, the greatest undertakings of the mediaeval ages, were 
primarily enterprises of the Christian chivalry of Europe; for 
chivalry had then come under the tutelage of the Church. In 
the year 1095 the Council of Clermont, which assembly formally 
inaugurated the First Crusade, decreed that every person of noble 
birth, on attaining the age of twelve, should take a solemn oath 
before a bishop "that he would defend to the uttermost the 
oppressed, the widow, and the orphan; and that women of noble 
birth should enjo}^ his special care." 

100. Training of the Knight. When chivalry had once be- 
come established, all the sons of the nobility, save such as were 
to enter the holy orders of the Church, were set apart and dis- 
ciplined for its service. The sons of the poorer nobles were 
usually placed in the family of some lord of renown and wealth, 
whose castle became a sort of school, where they were trained 
in the duties and exercises of knighthood. 

This education began at the early age of seven, the youth bear- 
ing the name of page or varlet until he .attained the age of four- 
teen, when he acquired the title of squire, or esquire. The lord 
and his knights trained the boys in manly and martial duties, 
while the ladies of the castle instructed them in the duties of 
religion and in all knightly etiquette. The duties of the page were 
usually confined to the castle, though sometimes he accompanied 
his lord to the field. The esquire always attended in battle the 
knight to whom he was attached, carrying his arms and, if need 
be, engaging in the fight. 



90 



FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY 



[§101 



101. The Ceremony of Knighting. At the age of twenty- 
one the squire became a knight, being then introduced to the 
order of knighthood by a pecuUar and impressive service. After 
a long fast and vigil the candidate listened to a lengthy sermon 
on his duties as a knight. Then kneeling, as in the feudal cere- 
mony of homage, before the lord conducting the services, he 
vowed to defend religion and the ladies, to succor the distressed, 
and ever to be faithful to his companion knights. His arms 
were now given to him, and his sword was girded on, when the 
lord, striking him with the flat of his sword on the shoulders, 

said, "In the name 
of God, of St. 
Michael, and of St. 
George, I dub thee 
knight ; be brave, 
bold, and loyal." 

102. The Tour- 
nament. The tour- 
nament was the 
favorite amusement 
of the age of chiv- 
alry. It was a mimic 
battle between two companies of noble knights, armed usually 
with pointless swords or blunted lances. In the universal esteem 
in which the participants were held, it reminds us of the sacred 
games of the Greeks; while in the fierce and sanguinary character 
it sometimes assumed, it recalls the gladiatorial combats of the 
Roman amphitheater. In the later period of chivalry it assumed 
the character of a gay and elegant festival. 

The prince or baron giving the tournament made wide proclama- 
tion of the event, brave and distinguished knights being invited 
even from distant lands to grace the occasion with their presence 
and an exhibition of their skill and prowess. The lists — a level 
space marked off by a rope or railing and surrounded with gal- 
leries for spectators — were made gay with banners and tapes- 
tries and heraldic emblems. 




f^Ui. 15. Arming A KxK.HT. (From a manuscript 
of the thirteenth century ; after Lacroix) 



§ 103] CHARACTER OF THE KNIGHT 91 

When the moment arrived for the opening of the ceremony, 
heralds proclaimed the rules of the contest, whereupon the combat- 
ants advanced into the lists, each knight displaying upon his hel- 
met or breast the device of the mistress of his affections. At the 
given signal the opposing parties of knights, vi^ith couched lances, 
rode fiercely at each other. Victory was accorded to him who 
unhorsed his antagonist or broke in a proper manner the greatest 
number of lances. The reward of the victor was a wreath of 




Fig. 16. A Tilting Match hetween Two Knights 

flowers, armor, greyhounds, or steeds decked with knightly trap- 
pings, and, more esteemed than all else, the praises and favor of 
his lady-love. 

The joust differed from the tournament in being an encounter 
between two knights only, and in being attended with less 
ceremony. 

103. Character of the Knight. Chivalric loyalty to the 
mistress of his supreme affection was the first article in the creed 
of the true knight. "He who was faithful and true to his lady," 
says Hallam, "was held sure of salvation in the theology of 
castles, though not of Christians." He must also be gentle, brave, 



92 



FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY 



[§ 103 



courteous, truthful, pure, generous, hospitable, faithful to his 
engagements, and ever ready to risk life and limb in the cause 
of religion and in defense of his companions in arms. 

But these were the virtues and qualifications of the ideal 
knight. It is needless to say that, though there were many who 
illustrated all these virtues in their blameless lives and romantic 

enterprises, there were 
too many who were 
knights only in pro- 
fession. "An errant 
knight," as an old 
writer puns, with too 
much truth, "was an 
arrant knave." An- 
other writer says, 
"Deeds that would 
disgrace a thief, and 
acts of cruelty that 
would have disgusted 
a Hellenic tyrant or 
a Roman emperor, 
were common things 
with knights of the 
highest lineage." 

But cruelty, treach- 
ery, untruthfulness, 
cowardice, baseness, 
and crime of every sort were opposed to the true spirit of chiv- 
alry; and the knight who was convicted of such faults could be 
punished by expulsion from the order of knighthood, by what 
was known as the Ceremony of Degradation. In this ceremony 
the spurs of the offending knight were struck off from his heels 
with a heavy cleaver, his sword was broken, and his horse's tail 
cut off. Then the disgraced knight was dressed in a burial robe, 
and the usual funeral ceremonies were performed over him, signify- 
ing that he was "dead to the honors of knighthood." 




Fig. 17. Degradation of a Knight. (Frag- 
ment of a woodcut dated 1 565 ; after Lacroix) 



§ 104] THE DECLINE OF CHIVALRY 93 

104. The Decline of Chivalry. The fifteenth century was the 
evening of chivalry. The decline of the system resulted from 
the operation of the same causes that effected the overthrow of 
feudalism. The changes in the mode of warfare which helped to 
dc5 away with the feudal baron and his mail-clad retainers likewise 
tended to destroy knight-errantry. And then as civilization 
advanced, new feelings and sentiments began to claim the atten- 
tion and to work upon the imagination of men. Persons ambitious 
of distinction began to seek it in other ways than by adventures of 
chivalry. Governments, too, became more regular, and the in- 
creased order and security of society rendered less needful the 
services of the gallant knight in behalf of the weak and the 
oppressed. 

In a word, the extravagant performances of the knight-errant 
carried into a practical and commercial age — an age very differ- 
ent from that which gave birth to chivalry — ^ became fantastic and 
ridiculous ; and when, finally, early in the seventeenth century, the 
genial Spanish satirist Cervantes wrote his famous Don Quixote, 
in which work he leads his hero knight into all sorts of absurd 
adventures, such as running a tilt against a windmill, which his 
excited imagination had pictured to be a monstrous giant flour- 
ishing his arms with some wicked intent, everybody, struck with 
the infinite absurdity of the thing, fell a-laughing; and amidst 
the fitting accompaniment of smiles and broad pleasantries the 
knight-errant took his departure from the world.^ 

105. The Evil and the Good in Chivalry. " For the mind," 
affirms a friendly historian of the knights, "chivalry did little; 
for the heart it did everything." Doubtless we must qualify the 
latter part of this statement. While it is true that chivalry, as 
we shall in a moment maintain, did much for the heart, its in- 
fluences upon it were not altogether good. The system had many 
vices, chief among which were its aristocratic, exclusive tenden- 
cies. Dr. Arnold, indignant among other things at the knights' 

1 That is, from the world of romantic Hterature ; for the satire of Cervantes was 
aimed at the extravagances of the romancers of his times. (Recall Spenser's The 
Fat-iy Qnee7te.) There were not many real knights-errant when Cervantes wrote. 



94 FEUDALISM AND CHIVALRY [§ 105 

forgetfulness or disregard of the brotherhood of man, exclaims 
bitterly, "■ If I were called upon to name what spirit of evil predomi- 
nantly deserved the name of Antichrist, I should name the Spirit of 
Chivalry." And another indignant writer declares that "it is 
not probable that the knights supposed they could be guilty of 
injustice to the lower classes." These were regarded with indif- 
ference or contempt, and considered as destitute of any claims 
upon those of noble birth as were beasts of burden or the game 
of the chase. It is always the young and beautiful woman of 
gentle birth whose wrongs the valiant knight is risking his life 
to avenge, always the smiles of the queen of love and beauty for 
which he is splintering his lance in the fierce tournament. The 
fostering of this aristocratic spirit was one of the most serious 
faults of chivalry. Yet we must bear in mind that this fault 
should be charged to the age rather than to the knight. 

But to speak of the beneficial, refining influences of chivalry, 
we should say that it undoubtedly contributed powerfully to lift 
that sentiment of respect for the gentler sex which characterized 
the northern nations into that tender veneration of woman 
which forms the distinguishing characteristic of the present 
age, and makes it differ from all preceding phases of civilization.^ 

Again, chivalry did much to create that ideal of character — 
an ideal distinguished by the virtues of courtesy, gentleness, 
humanity, loyalty, magnanimity, and fidelity to the plighted 
word — which we rightly think to surpass any ever formed 
under the influences of antiquity. Just as Christianity gave to 
the world an ideal of manhood which it was to strive to realize, 
so did chivalry hold up an ideal to which men were to conform 
their lives. Men, indeed, have never perfectly realized either 
the ideal of Christianity or that of chivalry; but the influence 
which these two ideals have had in shaping and giving character 
to the lives of men cannot be overestimated. Together, through 
the enthusiasm and effort awakened for their realization, they 

1 But for chivalry the Beatrice of Dante, the Laura of Petrarch, Shakespeare's 
Miranda and Goethe's Marguerite, could not have been created, much less com- 
prehended. — Davis, Medicnial Europe (191 1), p. 105 



§ 105] REFERENCES AND TOPICS 95 

have produced a new type of manhood, which we indicate by the 
phrase "a knightly and Christian character." 

Selections from the Sources. Translations and Reprints, vol. iii, No. 5, 
" English Manorial Documents," and vol. iv, No. 3, " Documents Illustrative 
of P'eudalism." Robinson, J. H., Readings in European History, vol. i, chap. ix. 

References (Modern). Emerton, E., Intjvduction to the Middle Ages, 
chap. XV ; and Mediicval Europe, chap, xiv and the first part of chap. xv. 
Adams, G. B., Civilization, during t/ie Middle Ages, chap. ix. Seignokos, C, 
T/ie Eeudal Regime. SeebuHM, F., The English Village Commutiity (the most 
noteworthy work in our language on the subject with which it deals). 
Cheyney, E. p., An Introduction to the Indiistrial and Social Histoiy of Eng- 
land, chap, ii, " Rural Life and Organization." Munro, D. C, and Sellery, 
G. C, Mediaval Civilization, pp. 1 59-2 1 1 and 240-247. James, G. P. R., History 
of Chivaby. CoRNlsH, F. W., Chivalry. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Life on a mediaeval English manor, or vill : 
Cheyney, E. P., Industrial and Social History of England, chap. ii. 2. The 
open-field system of cultivation : Seebohm, F., The English Village Coniniunity, 
chap. i. 3. The spirit of knight-errantry : Cutts, E. L., Scenes and Characters of 
the Middle Ages, pp. 353-368. 




CHAPTER X 



THE NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 

106. Introductory. The history of the Normans — the name, 
it will be recalled, of the transformed Scandinavians who settled 
in northern Gaul (sect. 85) — is simply a continuation of the 
story of the Northmen; and nothing could better illustrate the 
difference between the period we have left behind and the one 
upon which we have entered, nothing could more strikingly 
exhibit the gradual transformation that has crept over the face 
and spirit of European society, than the transformation which 
time and favoring associations have wrought in these men. When 
first we met them in the ninth century they were pagans; now 
they are Christians. Then they were rough, wild, merciless cor- 
sairs; now they are become the most cultured, polished, and 
chivalrous people in Europe. But the restless, daring spirit that 
drove the Norse sea kings forth upon the waves in quest of 
adventure and boot}^ still stirs in the breasts of their descend- 
ants.^ As has been said, they were simply changed from heathen 
Vikings, delighting in the wild life of sea rover and pirate, into 
Christian knights, eager for pilgrimages and crusades. 

The most important of the various adventurous enterprises of 
the Normans, and one followed by consequences of the greatest 

Note. The picture at the head of this page shows the landing in England of 
William of Normandy. (From the Bayeux tapestry.) 

1 This spirit the Normans transmitted to the English : " Look where you may, you 
find Englishmen of the same stamp [as the crusading Norman knight] — Sir Walter 
Raleigh and Lord Nelson, Stanley and Dr. Livingstone and General Gordon show the 
sea-kings' courage and recklessness" (Jewett, Sto>y of the Normans, p. aS). The 
records of the British navy in the war of 1914-1918 show that these Viking traits still 
persist in the English race. 

96 



§ 107] EVENTS LEADING UP TO THE CONQUEST 97 

magnitude not only to the conquered people but indirectly to the 
world, was their conquest of England in the eleventh century.^ 

107. Events leading up to the Conquest, In the year 1066 
Edward the Confessor, in whose person, it will be recalled, the old 
English line was restored after the Danish usurpation (sect. 84), 
died, and immediately the Witan,- in accordance with the dying 
wish of the king, chose Harold, Earl of Wessex, the best and 
strongest man in all England, to be his successor. 

When the news of the action of the Witan and of Harold's 
acceptance of the English crown was carried across the Chan- 
nel to William, Duke of Normandy, he was greatly vexed. He 
declared that Edward, who was his cousin, had during his life- 
time promised the throne to him, and that Harold had assented 
to this, and by solemn oath engaged to sustain him. He now 
demanded of Harold that he surrender to him the usurped throne, 
threatening the immediate invasion of the island in case he 
refused. King Harold answered the demand by collecting an 
army for the defense of his dominions. Duke William now made 
ready for a descent upon the English coast. 

108. The Battle of Hastings (1066). The Norman army of 
invasion landed in the south of England, at the port of Hastings, 
which place gave name to the battle that almost immediately 
followed, — the battle that was to determine the fate of England. 
.The charge of the Norman horsemen was begun by a knight 
riding out from the lines and advancing alone, tossing up his 
sword and skillfully catching it as it fell, and singing all the while 
the stirring battle song of Charlemagne and Roland.^ The Eng- 
lish watched with astonishment this exhibition of " careless dexter- 
ity," and if they did not compare the vivacity and nimbleness of 

1 Not long before the Normans conquered England, they succeeded in gaining 
a foothold in the south of Italy, where they established a feudal state, which ultimately 
included the island of Sicily. The fourth head of the commonwealth was the celebrated 
Robert Guiscard (d. 1085), who spread the renown of the Norman name throughout the 
Mediterranean lands. This Norman state, converted finally into a kingdom, lasted until 
late in the twelfth century (1194). 

- The Witan, or Witenagemot, which means the " Meeting of the Wise Men," 
was the common council of the realm. The House of Lords of the present Parliament 
is a survival of this early national assembly. 3 See above, p. 61, n. i. 



98 



NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND 



[§109 



the Norman foe with their own heavy and clumsy ways, others at 
least have not failed to mark the contrast. 

The battle once joined, the conilict was long and terrific. 
The day finally went against the English. Harold fell, pierced 
through the eye by an arrow; and William was master of the 
field. He now marched upon London, and at Westminster, 
on Christmas Day, 1066, was crowned king of England. 

109. The Distribution of the Land and the Gemot of Salis- 
bury. Almost the first act of William after he had established his 
power in England was to fulfill his promise to the nobles who had 




Fig. 18. Battle of Hastings. (From the Bayeux tapestry) 

aided him in his enterprise, by distributing among them the unre- 
deemed' estates of the English who had fought at Hastings in 
defense of their king and country. 

Profiting by the lesson taught by the wretched condition of 
France, which country was kept in a state of constant turmoil by 
a host of feudal chiefs and lords many of whom were almost or 
quite as powerful as the king himself, William took care that in 
the distribution no feudatory should receive an entire shire, save 
in two or three exceptional cases. To the great lord to whom 
he must needs give a large fief, he granted not a continuous tract 
of land but several estates, or manors, scattered in different parts 
of the country, in order that there might be no dangerous con- 
centration of property or power in the hands of the vassal. 

1 " When the lands of all those who had fought for Harold were confiscated, those 
who were willing to acknowledge William were allowed to redeem theirs, either paying 
money at once or giving hostages for the payment " (Stubbs, Const. Hist., vol. i, p. 258). 
As many as 20,000 .Saxon proprietors in all are said to have been dispossessed by as 
many Norman followers of William. 



§110] DOMESDAY BOOK 99 

Another equally important limitation of the power of the vassal 
was effected by William through his requiring all fief holders, great 
and small, to take an oath of fealty directly to him as overlord. 
This was a great innovation upon feudal custom, for the rule was 
that the vassal should swear fealty to his own immediate lord only, 
and in war follow his banner even against his own king. The 
oath that William exacted from every fief holder made the alle- 
giance which he owed to his king superior to that which he owed 
to his own immediate lord. At the great gemot, or military 
assembly, of Salisbury in the year 1086 "all the landholders of 
substance in England" swore lo William this solemn oath of 
superior fealty and allegiance. 

William also denied to his feudatories the right of coining 
money and making laws; and by other wise restrictions upon 
their power he saved England from those endless contentions and 
petty wars that were distracting almost every other country of 
Europe. 

To overawe the dispossessed people William now built and 
garrisoned fortresses or towers in all the principal cities of the 
realm. The celebrated Tower of London and the great black, 
massive tower still standing in the city of Newcastle were built 
by him, and are impressive memorials of the days of the Con- 
quest. His nobles also erected strong castles upon their lands, so 
that the whole country fairly bristled with these fortified private 
residences. With the towns dominated by the great fortresses, and 
the open country watched over by the barons secure in their thick- 
walled castles, the Normans, though greatly inferior in numbers to 
the Saxons, were able to hold them in complete subjection. 

110. Domesday Book. One of the most celebrated acts of 
the Conqueror was the making of the Domesday Book. This 
famous book contained a description and valuation of all the lands 
of England, — excepting those of some counties, mostly in the 
north, that were either unconquered or unsettled; an enumeration 
of the cattle and sheep; and statements of the income of every 
man. It was intended, in a word, to be a perfect survey and 
census of the entire kingdom. 



100 



NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND L>?111 



The commissioners who went through the land to collect the 
needed information for the work were often threatened by the 
people, who resented this "prying into their affairs," and looked 
upon the whole thing as simply another move preparatory to fresh 
taxation. But notwithstanding the bitter feelings with which the 
English viewed the work, it was certainly a wise and necessary 
measure, and one prompted by statesmanlike motives. 

111. The Curfew and the Forest Laws. Among the regulations 
introduced into England by the Conqueror was the peculiar one 

known as the cur- 
few. This law re- 
quired that upon 
the ringing of the 
church bell at night- 
fall every person 
should be at home 
and that the fires 
should be buried ^ 
and the lights ex- 
tinguished. 

Two reasons have 
been assigned for 
this ordinance: the 
one supposes that 
its object was to 
prevent the people's assembling by night to plan or execute 
treasonable undertakings ; the other represents it simply as a safe- 
guard against fire. The law was certainly in force in Normandy 
before the Conquest; indeed, according to Palgrave, it was a 
universal custom of police throughout the whole of mediaeval 
Europe. 

Less justifiable and infinitely more odious to the people were 
the Forest Laws of the Normans. The Normans were excessively 
fond of the chase. William had for the sport a perfect passion. 
An old chronicler declares that "he loved the tall deer as if he 




Fk;. 19. Do.MKSUAY Book. (From a facsimile 
edition published by royal command in 1 8G2) 

There are two large volumes of the survey, one being a 

folio of 760 pages and the other a large octavo of 900 pages. 

The strong box shown in the cut is the chest in which the 

volumes were formerly kept 



1 Hence the term atrfezv, from couvrir, "to cover," and/i7<, "fire." 



§112] SUCCESSORS OF THE CONQUEROR loi 

were their father." Extensive tracts of country were turned into 
forests by the destruction of the farmhouses and villages. More 
than fifty hamlets, and numerous churches, are said to have been 
destroyed in the creation of what was known as the New Forest/ 
The game in these forests was protected by severe laws. Tjo 
kill a deer was a greater crime than to kill a man. Several mem- 
bers of the Conqueror's family were killed while hunting in these 
royal preserves, and the people declared that these misfortunes 
were the judgment of Heaven upon the cruelty of their founder. 

112, The Norman Successors of the Conqueror. For nearly 
three quarters of a century after the death of William the Con- 
queror, England was ruled by Norman kings.- The latter part 
of this period was a troublous time. The succession to the 
crown coming into dispute, civil war broke out. The result of 
the contention was a decline in the royal power, and the ascend- 
ancy of the Norman barons, who for a time made England the 
scene of the same feudal anarchy that prevailed at this period 
upon the Continent. Finally, in 1154, the Norman dynasty gave 
place to that of the Plantagenets. Under Henry II (1154-1189), 
the first king of the new house, and an energetic and strong 
ruler, the barons were again brought into proper subjection to 
the crown, and many castles which had been built without royal 
permission during the preceding anarchical period, and some of 
which at least were little better than robbers' dens, were dis- 
mantled and demolished. 

113. Results of the Norman Conquest. The most important 
and noteworthy result of the Conquest was the establishment in 
England of a strong centralized government, which resulted largely 
from the modification of feudal rules and practices effected by the 
Conqueror. England now became a real kingdom, — what it had 
hardly been in more than semblance before. 

1 The term forest as applied to these hunting parks does not necessarily mean 
a continuous wooded tract, but simply untilled ground left to grow up to weeds and 
shrubs as a covert for game. 

2 William 11, known as Rufus "the Red" (1087-1100) ; Henry I, sumamed 
Beauclerc, "the good scholar" (1100-1135); and Stephen of Blois (1135-1154). 
William and Henry were sons, and Stephen a grandson, of the Conqueror. 



102 NORMAN CONQUEST OF ENGLAND [§ 113 

A second result of the Conquest was the founding of a new 
feudal aristocracy. The Saxon thane was displaced by the Nor- 
man baron. This not only introduced a new and more refined 
element into the social life of England, but it also changed the 
membership, the temper, and the name of the national assembly, 
the old English Witan now becoming the Parliament of later times. 

A third result of the Concjuest was the drawing of England 
into closer relations with the countries of continental Europe. 
The Norman Conquest was in this respect like the Roman con- 
Cjuest of the island. Through the many continental relations — 
political, social, commercial, and ecclesiastical — now established 
or made more intimate, England's advance in trade, in architec- 
ture, in her religious and intellectual life, was greatly promoted. 
And in this connection must be borne in mind particularly the 
close political and feudal relations into which England was 
brought with France, for out of these grew the jealousies and 
rivalries which led to the long Hundred Years' War between the 
two countries.^ 

Selections from the Sources. 77/e Bayeux Tapestry (reproduced in aut6- 
type plates with historic notes by Frank Rede Fowke, London, 1875). This 
is a strip of linen canvas over two hundred feet long and nineteen inches 
wide, upon which are embroidered in colors seventy-two pictures, representing 
episodes in the Norman conquest of England. The work was executed not 
long after the events it depicts, and is named from the cathedral in France 
where it is kept. Its importance consists in the information it conveys 
respecting the life and manners, and the costumes, arms, and armor of the 
times. Kendall, E. K., Source-Book of English Ilistoty, chap. iii. Ogg, F. A., 
Sottrce Book of Medicsval Histoiy, chap. xiv. 

References (Modern). Haskins, C. H., The A'07'mans /;/ European Histoiy. 
Freeman, E. A., The A'orman Conquest (a little book which contains "the 
same tale told afresh," that fills the six volumes of the author's earlier great 
work on the Norman Conquest). Johnson, A. H., The A^ormafts m Europe. 
Stenton, F. M., ]Vi!Uam the Couijueror. Green, J. R., The Conquest of 
England., chap. x. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Effects on England of the Norman Conquest: 
Freeman, E. A., The A'orman Conquest, chap. xiv. 2. Life in the manor house : 
Trailk H. D. (ed.), Social England, vol. i, pp. 375-382. 3. Why the battle of 
Hastings is regarded as one of the decisive battles of history : Creasy, E. S., 
Decisive Battles of the World, chap. vii. 

1 For the effects of the Conquest upon the English language and literature, .see 
sects. 203, 204. 



CHAPTER XI 
THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE 

114. The Two World Powers. ''The two great ideas," says 
James Bryce, "which expiring antiquity bequeathed to the ages 
that followed were those of a world monarchy and a world reli- 
gion." We have seen how out of one of these ideas, under the 
favoring circumstances of the earlier mediaeval centuries, was 
developed the Empire, and out of the other the Papacy. The 
history of these two powers, of their relations to the rulers and 
the peoples of Europe, and of their struggle with each other for 
supremacy, makes up a large part of the history of the mediaeval 
centuries. It is of these important matters that we must now 
try to get some sort of understanding. 

What we have learned about the ideas and principles of feu- 
dalism will aid us greatly in our study, for, as we shall see, the 
whole long struggle between these two world powers was deeply 
marked by feudal conceptions and practices. 

115. The Three Theories respecting the Relations of- Pope 
and Emperor. After the revival of the Empire in the West and 
the rise of the Papacy, there gradually grew up three different 
theories in regard to the divinely constituted relation of the "world 
king" and the "world priest." The first was that Pope and 
Emperor were each independently commissioned by God, the first 
to rule the spirits of men, the second to rule their bodies. Each 
reigning thus by original divine right, neither is set above 
the other, but both are to cooperate and to help each other. The 
special duty of the temporal power is to maintain order in the 
world and to be the protector of the Church. The Emperor bears 
the sword for the purpose of executing the decrees of the Church 
against all heretics and disturbers of its peace and unity. Thus 

103 



104 



THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE 



[§115 



this theory looked to a perfect and beautiful alliance between 
Church and State, a double sovereignty emblemized in the dual 
nature of Christ. 

The second theory, the one held by the imperial party, was 
that the Emperor was superior to the Pope in secular affairs. 
Arguments from Scripture and from the 
transactions of history were not wanting 
to support this view of the relation of 
the two world powers. Thus Christ's 
payment of tribute money was cited as 
proof that he regarded the temporal 
power as superior to the spiritual. And 
then, did he not say, " Render unto 
Caesar the things which are Caesar's"? 
Further, the gifts of Pippin and Charles 
the Great to the Roman See made the 
popes, it was maintained, the vassals of 
the emperors. 

Fig. 20. The Spiritual The third theory, the one held by the 
AND THE Temporal p^p^i p^j-^y^ maintained that the or- 

PowER. (From a ninth-cen- 1 • 1 1 .• f ^u * 

\ . , ^ darned relation 01 the two powers was 

tury mosaic in the Lateran , ,. . 

. r, (^ -I the subordination of the temporal to 

at Rome ; aiter Jaeger, _ _ t' 

]Velte:cscJiii]ite) ^he spiritual authority, even in civil 

St. Peter gives to Pope Leo I II affairs. This view was maintained by 

the stola and to Charlemagne SUch textS of Scripture aS these: "But 
the banner of Rome as symbols ^^ jj^^^ jg spiritual judgeth all things, 
of the spiritual and temporal .> o 07 

powers. The portrait of chaiie- yet lie himself is judged of uo man " ; ^ 
magna here shown is with little " ggg^ J ^.^^g t^jg day Set thee over the 

doubt the oldest in existence . 1 1 • i 

nations and over the kingdoms, to root 
out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to 
build, and to plant."- The conception was further illustrated by 
such comparisons as the following, — for in mediaeval times par- 
able and metaphor often took the place of argument : As God has 
set in the heavens two lights, the sun and the moon, so has he 
established on earth two powers, the spiritual and the temporal; 




1 I Cor. ii. 15. 



'^ Jer, i. 10. 



§ 116] REFORMS OF GREGORY VII 105 

but as the moon is inferior to the sun and receives its light from it, 
so is the Emperor inferior to the Pope and receives all power from 
him.^ Again, the two authorities were likened to the soul and the 
body; as the former rules over the latter, so is it ordered that the 
spiritual power shall rule over and subject the temporal. 

The first theory was the impracticable dream of lofty souls who 
forgot that men are human. Christendom was virtually divided 
into two hostile camps, one supporting the imperial, the other 
the papal, claims. 

116. Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085) and his Reforms. One 
of the most eminent supporters of the papal claims was Pope 
Gregor)'- VII, better known by his earlier name of Hildebrand, 
the most noteworthy character, after Charlemagne, that the Mid- 
dle Ages produced. In the year 1049 ^^ was brought from the 
cloisters of the celebrated monastery of Cluny, in France, to 
Rome, where he became the maker and adviser of popes, and 
finally was himself elevated to the pontifical throne, which he 
held from 1073 ^^ 1085. 

When Gregory came to the papal throne one grave danger 
threatening the Church was the marriage of the clergy. At this 
time a great part of the minor clergy were married. Gregory 
resolved to bring all the clergy to the strict observance of celi- 
bate vows. By thus separating the priests from the attachments 
of home, and lifting from them all family burdens and cares, he 
aimed to render their consecration to the duties of their offices 
more whole-souled and their dependence upon the Church more 
complete. Though most obstinately opposed by a large section of 
the clergy, this reform was finally effected, — but not in Gregory's 
time, — so that celibacy became as binding upon the priest as 
upon the monk. 

Gregory's second reform, the correction of simony,^ had for 
one of its ultimate objects the freeing of the lands and offices of 

1 Dante, maintaining the rights of the Emperor, ruined the force of this comparison by 
pointing out that while the moon often eclipses the sun, the sun never eclipses the moon. 

- By simony is meant the purchase of an office in the Church, the name of the 
offense coming from Simon Magus, who offered Peter money for the power to confer 
the Holy Spirit. See Acts viii. 9-24. 



io6 



THE TAPACY AND THE EMPIRE 



[§ 116 



the Church from the control of lay lords and princes, and the 
bringing of them more completely under the direction of the 
Roman pontiff. 

The evil of simony had grown up in the Church chiefly in the 
following way: As the feudal system took possession of European 
society, the Church, like individuals and cities, assumed feudal 
relations. Thus, as we have already seen, abbots and bishops, as 

the heads of monasteries and 
churches, for the sake of protec- 
tion, became the vassals of power- 
ful barons or princes. When once 
a prelate had promised fealty for 
his estates or temporalities, as 
they were called, these became 
henceforth a permanent fief of the 
overlord and subject to all the in- 
cidents of the feudal tenure. When 
a vacancy occurred the lord as- 
sumed the right to fill it, just as 
in case of the escheat of a lay fief.^ 
In this way the temporal rulers 
throughout Europe had come to 
exercise the right of nominating or 
confirming the election of almost 
all the great prelates of the Church. 
Now these lay princes who had the patronage of these Church 
offices and lands handled them just as they did their lay fiefs. 
They required the person nominated to an abbacy or to a bishop- 
ric to pay for the appointment and investiture a sum proportioned 
to the income from the office. This was in strict accord with the 
feudal rule which allowed the lord to demand from the vassal, 
upon his investiture with a fief, a sum of money called a relief 
(sect. 90). This rule, thus applied to Church lands and offices, 
was, it is easy to see, the cause of great evil and corruption. The 




Fig. 21. Investiture ok a 
Bishop by a King THROUcm 

THE GiVIXG OF THE CrOSIEK, 

OR Pastoral Staff. (From a 
manuscript of the tenth century) 



1 Tlie clergy and monks still retained the nominal right of election, but too 
frequently an election by them was a mere matter of form. 



H17J EXCOMMUNICATION AND INTERDICT 107 

ecclesiastical vacancies were virtually sold to the highest bidder, 
and at times the most unsuitable persons became bishops and 
abbots. 

To remedy the evil Gregory issued decrees forbidding any one 
of the clergy to receive the investiture of a bishopric or abbey 
or church from the hands of a temporal prince or lord. Any one 
who should dare to disobey these decrees was threatened with the 
penalties of the Church. 

117. Excommunication and Interdict. The principal in- 
struments relied upon by Gregory for the carrying out of his 
decrees were the spiritual weapons of the Church, — Excom- 
munication and Interdict. 

The first was directed against individuals. The person excom- 
municated was cut off from all relations with his fellow-men. If 
a king, his subjects were released from their oath of allegiance. 
Any one providing the excommunicate with food or shelter in- 
curred the penalties of the Church. Living, the excommunicated 
person was to be shunned as though tainted with an infectious 
disease; and dead, he was to be refused the ordinary rites of 
burial. 

The interdict was directed against a city, province, or kingdom. 
Throughout the region under this ban the churches were closed; 
no bell could be rung, no marriage celebrated, no burial ceremony 
performed. The sacraments of baptism and extreme unction alone 
could be administered. 

It is difficult for us to realize the effect of these bans in 
mediaeval times. They rarely failed in bringing the most con- 
tumacious offender to a speedy and abject confession or in effect- 
ing his undoing. This will appear in the following paragraph. 

118. The Investiture Contest; Emperor Henry IV's Humili- 
ation at Canossa (1077). It was in Germany that Gregory ex- 
perienced the most formidable opposition to his reform measures. 
The Emperor elect. King Henry IV (1056-1106), — who had been 
threatened by Gregory with excommunication and deposition, — 
gathering in council such of the prelates of the Empire as would 
answer his call, even dared to bid Gregory descend from the 



io8 THE PAPACY AND THE EMPIRE [§ 119 

papal throne. Gregory in turn gathered a council at Rome and 
deposed and excommunicated the Emperor. " In the name of 
Almighty God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," thus ran the solemn 
papal decree, "I withdraw . . . from Henry the king . . . the 
rule over the whole kingdom of .the Germans and over Italy. And 
I absolve all Christians from the bond of the oath which they 
have made or shall make to him; and I forbid any one to serve 
him as king." This decree is especially memorable for the reason 
that this was the first time that a pope had ventured to depose 
a king. 

Henry's deposition encouraged a revolt on the part of some of 
his discontented subjects. He was shunned as a man accursed by 
Heaven. His authority seemed to have slipped entirely out of his 
hands, and his kingdom was on the point of going to pieces. In 
this wretched state of his affairs there was but one thing for him 
ta do, — to go to Gregory and humbly sue for pardon and rein- 
statement in the favor of the Church. 

Henry sought Gregory among the Apennines, at Canossa, a 
stronghold of the celebrated Countess Matilda of Tuscany. But 
Gregory refused to admit him to his presence. It was winter, and 
on three successive days the king, clothed in sackcloth, stood with 
bare feet in the snow of the courtyard of the castle, waiting for 
permission to kneel at the feet of the pontiff and to receive for- 
giveness. On the fourth day the king was admitted to Gregory's 
presence and the sentence of excommunication removed. 

Henry afterwards avenged his humiliation. He raised an army, 
descended upon Rome, and drove Gregory into exile at Salerno, 
where he died with these words on his lips: ''I have loved justice 
and hated iniquity, and therefore I die an exile" (1085). 

But the quarrel did not end here. It was taken up by the suc- 
cessors of Gregory, and Henry was again excommunicated. After 
maintaining a long struggle with the power of the Church and 
with his own sons, who were incited to rebel against him, he 
finally died broken-hearted. 

119. Concordat of Worms (1122). Henry's successors, not- 
withstanding the blow that had been given to the prestige of the 



§ 119] CONCORDAT OF WORMS 109 

imperial power, kept up the quarrel with the popes. The outcome of 
the matter, after many years of bitter contention, was the cele- 
brated Concordat of Worms. It was agreed that all bishops 
and abbots of the Empire, after free election by those having the 
right, should receive the ring and staff, the symbols of their 
spiritual jurisdiction, from the Pope, but that the Emperor should 
exercise the right of investiture by the touch of a scepter, the 
emblem of temporal rights and authority. This was a recognition 
by both parties that all spiritual authority emanates from the 
Church and all temporal authority from the State. It was a 
compromise, — "a rendering unto Caesar of the things that are 
Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." 

We must here drop the story of the contentions of Pope and 
Emperor in order to watch the peoples of Europe as at the time 
we have now reached they undertake with surprising unanimity 
and enthusiasm the most remarkable enterprises in which they 
were ever engaged, — the Crusades, or Holy Wars. 

It was the prestige and strength which the Papacy had gained 
in its contest with the Empire which enabled the popes to exert 
such an influence in setting the Crusades in motion and in direct- 
ing them; while at the same time it was these great enterprises 
which, reacting upon the Papacy, greatly aided the popes in 
realizing Gregory's ideal of making the papal authority supreme 
throughout Western Christendom. 

Selections from the Sources. Dante, De Mo7iarc/iia (trans, by Aurelia 
Henry). Dante argues that the authority of the Emperor comes direct from 
God and not from the Pope. Henderson, E. F., Select Historical Documents, 
pp. 351—409. Robinson, J. H., /headings in European History, vol. i, chap. xiii. 

References (Modern). Bryce, J., The Holy Rofuan Empire (this little work 
has become a classic). Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, 
chap. X. Emerton, E., JMediaval Europe, chaps, vii and viii. Alzog, J., Uni- 
versal Church History, vol. ii, pp. 253-336, 481-510. Tout, T. F., The Empire 
and the Papacy. Vincent, M. R., 77;;? Age of Hildebrand (earlier chapters). 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The monastery of Cluny : Munro, D. €., and 
Sellery, G. C., Alediceval Civilization, pp. 137-152. 2. The strife over investi- 
tures : Seignobos, G., Histo>y of Medieval and of Modem Civilization, pp. 105- 
109. 3. Emperor (elect) Henry IV at Canossa: Stephens, W. R. W., Hildebrand 
a7id his Times, pp. 126-132. 



CHAPTER XII 
THE CRUSADES 

(1096-1273) 

120. The Crusades defined; their Place in Universal His- 
tory. The Crusades were great military expeditions carried on 
intermittently for two centuries by the Christian peoples of 
Europe for the purpose of rescuing from the hands of the Moham- 
medans the holy places of Palestine and maintaining in the East 
a Latin kingdom. Historians usually enumerate eight of these 
expeditions as worthy of special narration. Of these eight the 
first four are often designated the Principal Crusades and the 
remaining four the Minor Crusades. But besides these there were 
a children's crusade and several other expeditions, which, being 
insignificant in numbers or results, are not usually enumerated, 
as well as several enterprises in Europe itself which partook of the 
nature of crusades. 

Viewed from the broadest standpoint the Crusades against the 
Moslems were simply an episode in that age-long drama of the 
struggle between the East and the West, between=Asia and Europe, 
of which the contest between the ancient Greeks and Persians 
was the opening act. Looked at in connection with a narrower 
cycle of events, they mark the culmination of the long contest 
between the two great world religions, Islam and Christianity, 
the beginnings of which we have already seen, and which down 
to the twentieth century found expression in the antagonism 
between the Ottoman Turks and the Christian races of Europe. 

121. The Religious Motive; Pilgrimages. The chief moving 
force of the Holy Wars was the religious ideas and feelings of 
the times, particularly the sentiment respecting holy places and 
pifgrimages. In all ages men have been led by curiosity, senti- 
ment, or religion to make pilgrimages to spots which retain the 



§121] SACRED PLACES AND PILGRIMAGES iii 

memory of remarkable occurrences or have been consecrated by 
human suffering or heroism. Especially has the religious senti- 
ment of every people made the birthplaces or the tombs of their 
prophets, saints, and martyrs places of veneration and pilgrimage. 
Benares, Mecca, and Jerusalem attest the universality and 
strength of the sentiment among Hindus, Mohammedans, and 
Christians alike. 

Among the early Christians it was thought a pious and meri- 
torious act to undertake a journey to some sacred place. Espe- 
cially was it thought that a pilgrimage to the land whose soil had 
been pressed by the feet of the Saviour of the world, to the Holy 
City that had witnessed his martyrdom, was a peculiarly pious 
undertaking, and one which secured for the pilgrim the special 
favor and blessing of Heaven. 

Pilgrims began to make visits to the Holy Land from the 
countries of western Europe as soon as Christianity had taken 
possession of this part of the Roman Empire. At first the jour- 
ney was so difficult and dangerous that it was undertaken by 
comparatively few. Before the conversion of the Hungarians, 
who held the land route between Germany and the Bosphorus, 
the pilgrim usually made his way to some Mediterranean port, 
and sought a chance passage on board some vessel engaged in 
the Eastern trade. 

A great religious revival in the eleventh century, kindling as 
it did a holy fervor in multitudes of souls, gave a great impulse 
to this pilgrimaging zeal, and caused the number of pilgrims to 
the Holy Land greatly to increase. Instead of solitary travelers, 
companies numbering hundreds and even thousands^ might now 
be seen crowding the roads leading to Jerusalem; for the con- 
version of the Hungarians had recently reopened the overland 
route down the Danube. 

But just at this time a great revolution took place in the polit- 
ical affairs of the East. The Seljuk Turks, a prominent Tatar 
tribe, zealous proselytes of Islam, wrested Syria from the tolerant 

1 The largest company of which there is record numbered 7000 persons. This was 
led by an archbishop and set out in the year 106^, 



112 THE CRUSADES [§122 

Saracen caliphs. The Christians were not long in realizing that 
power had fallen into new hands. Pilgrims were insulted and 
persecuted in every way. The churches in Jerusalem were, in 
some cases, destroyed or turned into stables. 

Now, if it were a meritorious thing to make a pilgrimage to the 
Holy Sepulcher, much more would it be a pious act to rescue 
the sacred spot from the profanation of infidels. This was the 
conviction that changed the pilgrim into a warrior, — this the 
sentiment that for two centuries and more stirred the Christian 
world to its profoundest depths and cast the population of Europe 
in wave after wave upon Asia. 

122. The Growth of a Martial Spirit in the Church; the 
Church and Chivalry. This transformation of pilgrimages into 
crusades would not have been possible had not the Church itself 
in the course of the centuries undergone an amazing transfor- 
mation. In the earliest Christian times a Quaker spirit ruled the 
Church; by the eleventh century a martial spirit had taken com- 
plete possession of it. 

Various causes and circumstances had concurred to effect in 
the Church this astonishing transformation. First, Christianity, 
while transforming the barbarians, had been itself transformed 
by them. The new converts had carried their martial spirit into 
the Church. Fighters they had been and fighters they remained. 
Transformed by this alien spirit the Church modified its early 
Quaker teachings, and came at last to approve the military life, 
which the first Christians had very generally condemned as 
incompatible with the teachings of the Master. 

A second influence that helped to introduce the military 
spirit into the Church was the reaction upon it of the martial 
creed of Islam. For three centuries and more before the First 
Crusade the Moslems had been in contact, and during much 
of this time in actual combat, with the Christians of Europe. 
Under such circumstances the Church, as was natural, caught 
the military spirit of Mohammedanism and became quite as 
ready as its rival to call upon its followers to fight in defense 
or for the spread of the faith. 



§123] THE PEACE AND THE TRUCE OF GOD 113 

This military spirit in Christendom found characteristic expres- 
sion in chivalry. We have already spoken of the relation of the 
Church to the institution of knighthood (sect. 99). Chivalry 
passed under its tuition and patronage. When at the close of 
the eleventh century there went forth the papal call for volun- 
teers for the Holy Wars, it fell upon the willing ears of myriads 
of knights eager to make good their oaths of knighthood and to 
win renown in combat with the Moslem infidel. Once the old 
pagan Rome had made use of these same war-loving men of the 
North to fight the battles of the Empire; now the new Christian 
Rome enlists them beneath her standard to fight the battles of 
the Cross. 

123. The Peace and the Truce of God. Closely connected 
with the subject of the preceding paragraph, and also related in 
a very signiiicant way to the Crusades, was the institution estab- 
lished by the Church in the eleventh century and known as the 
"Truce of God." 

We have already become acquainted in some measure with 
the anarchical condition of society under feudalism. The central 
authority of the state was everywhere relaxed, and neither the 
emperor nor the kings were able to put a stop to the marauding 
and fighting of the great feudal lords. This right of waging pri- 
vate war was one of the most dearly prized privileges of these 
semicivilized barons. So Europe had reverted to that condition 
of perpetual warfare between tribes and clans that the Continent 
was in before Rome arose, and after centuries of titanic effort 
established throughout her wide Empire what was called the 
"Roman Peace" {Pax Romana). Every land was filled with 
fightings and violence. As one writer pictures it: "Every hill was 
a stronghold, every plain a battlefield. The trader was robbed 
on the highway, the peasant was killed at his plow, the priest 
was slain at the altar. Neighbor fought against neighbor, baron 
against baron, city against city." 

In the midst of this intolerable anarchy the Church lifted up 
a protesting voice. Just at the close of the tenth and in the 
early part of the eleventh century there was a movement in 



114 THE CRUSADES [§123 

France which aimed at the complete abolition of war between 
Christians. The Church proposed to do what had been effected 
for a time by the Caesars. It proclaimed what was called the 
" Peace of God." In the name of the God of peace it commanded 
all men to refrain from war and robbery and violence of every 
kind as contrary to the spirit and the teachings of Christianity. 
But it was found utterly impossible to make men desist from 
waging private wars, even though they were threatened with 
the everlasting tortures of hell. 

Then the clergy in southern France, seeing they could not 
suppress the evil entirely, concluded it were wiser to try to 
regulate it. This led to the promulgation of what was called the 
"Truce of God." We find the first trace of this towards the 
middle of the eleventh century in a Church edict commanding 
all men to maintain a holy and unbroken peace during four days 
of the week, from Wednesday evening to Monday morning, that 
is, during the days which were supposed to be rendered peculiarly 
sacred by the Saviour's death, burial, and resurrection. Who- 
soever should dare disobey the decree was threatened with the 
severest penalties of the Church. 

This movement to redeem at least a part of the days from 
fighting and violence embraced in time all the countries of 
western Europe. The details of the various edicts issued by 
Church councils and by the popes varied widely, but all em- 
braced the principle of the first edict. 

This Truce of God was not, as we may easily believe, very 
well observed; yet it did at least something during the eleventh 
and twelfth centuries to better the general condition of things, 
to mitigate the evils of private warfare, and to render life more 
tolerable and property more secure. 

We shall see a little later how the Church used the restraining 
authority it had acquired in this field to make it possible and safe 
for the feudal barons and knights, leaving their fiefs and other 
possessions under the protecting aegis of the Church, to go with 
their retainers on the distant and often prolonged expeditions of 
the Crusades. 



§124] THE NORMANS AS CRUSADERS 115 

124. Norman Restlessness and Crusading Zeal. To the vari- 
ous causes and antecedents of the Crusades already noticed must 
be added, as a near inciting cause, that spirit of adventure and 
unrest with which almost all the lands of western Europe were 
at just this time being filled by the enterprises of the Normans. 
The conquest of England by William the Conqueror and that of 
southern Italy and Sicily by other Norman leaders were simply 
two of the most important of their^ undertakings. Throughout 
the eleventh century the Norman knights, true to the old Viking 
spirit of their ancestors, were constantly raiding in Spain, in 
Africa, and in other Moslem lands. Everywhere they engaged 
in battle with the infidels. Everywhere they stirred up the 
embers of the old fierce hate between Christian and Moslem. 
Everywhere throughout Western Christendom they awakened, 
by their restless zeal, the crusading spirit and thus did much 
to prepare the way for the Holy Wars. 

125. Various Minor Causes. We have now detailed the chief 
causes, remote and immediate, of the Crusades. But there were 
other concurring causes which must not be overlooked. Many 
took part in the expeditions from mere love of change and adven- 
ture. Some of the Italian cities engaged in the undertakings 
from commercial or political motives. ]\Iany knights, princes, and 
even kings headed expeditions with a view of securing fiefs in 
the East from lands wrested from the infidel. Multitudes of serfs 
joined them to escape from a life of misery that had become 
unbearable. And vast numbers of the baser sort joined them 
in order to secure immunity from the penalty of debt and crime; 
for, as we shall see, the person and property of the crusader 
were taken under the special protection of the Church. 

Yet, notwithstanding that so many unworthy motives animated 
vast numbers of those engaging in the Crusades, we shall not be 
wrong in thinking that it was the religious feeling of the times, 
the conviction that the enterprise of rescuing the sacred places 
was a holy one, which was the main incitive force, in the absence 
of which all the other causes and motives enumerated would have 
proved wholly inadequate either to set in motion or to keep in 



ii6 



THE CRUSADES 



[§126 



motion these remarkable and long-continued expeditions. Because 
it was a generous religious sentiment that organized them, because 
it was the moving force of a grand religious ideal that maintained 
them so long, they are rightly called Holy Wars. 

126. Circumstances favoring the Crusading Enterprises. 
Notwithstanding the number and strength of the forces that con- 
^ curred to transform 



the population of 
the West into 
zealous crusaders, 
the Holy Wars 
would not have 
been possible or 
would have failed 
to meet with even 
the partial success 
that attended them 
had it not been for 
several favoring cir- 
cumstances. 

First, just before 
this time the Hun- 
garians had been 
converted to Chris- 
tianity, and thus 
the overland route 
to the East, which 
for several centuries had been barred by heathen hordes, was re- 
opened. Thus was the pathway for the earlier Crusaders prepared. 
Second, the growth during the tenth and eleventh centuries of 
the sea power of the republics of Venice, Genoa, and Pisa, to- 
gether with that of the Normans in southern Italy ,^ enabled the 
Christians to clear the middle Mediterranean of the Moslem pirate 
ships that had vexed its waters and shores ever since the rise of the 
Mohammedan power. Because of the crusaders' dread of the sea, 

1 See above, p. 97, n. i. 




Fig. 22. Reception of Crusaders by the 

King of Hungary. (From a fifteenth-century 

manuscript ; after Lacroix) 



m7] THE LEGEND OF PETER THE HERMIT 117 

the water route to Palestine was not followed by the earlier expedi- 
tions; but the advantages of the water passage gradually came to 
be realized and all the later expeditions reached their destination by 
ship. From the beginning of the movements it was alone the com- 
mand of the sea by the Italian cities that rendered possible that 
transport service which was indispensable to the maintenance of the 
colonies established in Palestine as a result of the First Crusade. 

Third, just four years before the First Crusade the vast empire 
which had been established in Asia by the Seljuk Turks fell to 
pieces and was replaced by a number of mutually jealous Turkish 
principalities. This was a most fortunate circumstance for the 
first crusaders, for had they been compelled to encounter the 
undivided forces of the original empire, it is not probable that any 
of them would ever have reached the Holy Land. 

Fourth, the cause of the Christians was greatly furthered by 
the antagonism of the Arabs and the Turks. This antagonism — 
which has been prolonged to our own day — almost fatally divided 
the strength of the Mohammedan world. 

Finally, the development within the Church of the papal power 
was a circumstance in the absence of which the Crusades could 
never have found a place in the history of Western Christendom. 
The popes used their preeminent authority to persuade the 
people to engage in the wars as pious undertakings. It was they 
who incited, organized, and directed with greater or less success 
the expeditions, and to them belongs whatever measure of praise 
or of censure attaches to the enterprises as a whole. 

127. The Legend of Peter the Hermit. There is a tradition 
which makes one immediate inciting cause of the First Crusade 
to have been the preaching of a monk named Peter the Hermit, 
a native of France. This legend tells how the monk, moved by 
devout longing, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land; how his 
sympathy and indignation were stirred by the sight of the indig- 
nities and cruelties to which the native and the pilgrim Christians 
were subjected by the infidels; and how, armed with letters from 
the patriarch of Jerusalem to the Christians of Europe, he hastened 
to Rome, and there, at the feet of Pope Urban II, begged to be 



ii8 THE CRUSADES [§128 

commissioned to preach a crusade for the deliverance of the Holy 
City. The Pope is represented as commending warmly the zeal 
of the hermit and, with promises of aid, sending him forth to stir 
up the people to engage in the holy undertaking. 

The legend now exhibits the monk as going everywhere, and 
addressing in the streets and in the open fields the crowds that 
press about him. The people look upon the monk, clothed in 
the coarse raiment of an anchorite, as a messenger from heaven, 
and even venerate the ass upon which he rides. His wild and 
fervid eloquence alternately melts his auditors to tears or lifts 
them into transports of enthusiasm. 

Such, in essential features, is the tradition of Peter the Hermit. 
The first part of this account is now discredited, and it seems 
quite certain that the monk's alleged pilgrimage to Jerusalem is a 
pure embellishment of the tale by later romancers. That the 
preaching of the monk, however, was of a most extraordinary 
character and produced a deep impression upon the popular mind 
is beyond doubt. But the real originator of the First Crusade was 
Pope Urban, and not the hermit, as the legend represents. 

128. The Council of Clermont (1095). While the religious 
feelings of the Christians of the West were growing tenser day by 
day, the Turks in the East were making constant advances, until 
at last they were threatening Constantinople itself. The Emperor 
Alexis Comnenus sent urgent letters to the Pope, asking for aid 
against the infidels, representing that, unless help were extended 
immediately, the capital with all its holy relics must soon fall into 
the hands of the barbarians. 

Pope Urban called a great council of the Church at Piacenza 
in Italy to consider the appeal, but nothing was effected at this 
meeting. Later in the same year a new council was convened 
at Clermont in France, Urban purposely fixing the place of meet- 
ing among the warm-tempered and martial Franks. Fourteen 
archbishops, two hundred and twenty-five bishops, four hundred 
abbots, and of others a multitude that no man could number, 
crowded to the council. 

After the meeting had considered some minor matters the 



§129] THE FIRST CRUSADE 119 

question which was agitating all hearts was brought before it. 
The Pope himself was one of the chief speakers. He possessed 
the gift of eloquence, so that the man, the cause, and the occasion 
all contributed to the achievement of one of the greatest triumphs 
of human oratory. Urban pictured the humiliation and misery of 
the provinces of Asia; the profanation of the places made sacred 
by the presence and footsteps of the Son of God; and then he 
detailed the conquests of the Turks, until now, with almost all 
Asia Minor in their possession, they were threatening Europe 
from the shores of the Hellespont. "When Jesus Christ sum- 
mons you to his defense," exclaimed the eloquent pontiff, "let 
no base affection detain you in your homes; whoever will aban- 
don his house, or his father, or his mother, or his wife, or his 
children, or his inheritance, for the sake of his name, shall be 
recompensed a hundredfold and possess life eternal." 

Here the enthusiasm of the vast assembly burst through every 
restraint. With one voice they cried, ^'Dieu le volt! Dieu le 
volt!'' "It is the will of God! It is the will of God! " Thou- 
sands immediately affixed the cross ^ to their garments as a pledge 
of their engagement to go forth to the rescue of the Holy Sepul- 
cher. The following summer was set for the expedition. 

129, The First Crusade (1096-1099) ; Founding of the 
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. It was the countries of France 
and southern Italy that were most deeply stirred by the papal 
call. By edict the Pope had granted to all who should enlist 
from right motives "remission of all canonical penalties," and 
promised to the truly penitent, in case they should die on the 
expedition, "the joy of life eternal." Under such inducements 
princes and nobles, bishops and monks, saints and sinners, rich 
and poor, hastened to enroll themselves beneath the standard of 
the Cross. "Europe," says Michaud, "appeared to be a land of 
exile, which every one was eager to quit." 

Raymond, Count of Toulouse; Robert, Duke of Normandy; 
Godfrey of Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine; Bohemund, Prince 

1 Hence the name Crusades given to the Holy \\'ars, from Old French crois, 
" cross." 



120 THE CRUSADES [§129 

of Otranto, and his nephew, Tancred, the ''mirror of knight- 
hood," were among the most noted of the leaders of the different 
divisions of the army which was soon gathered.^ The expedition 
is said to have numbered about three hundred thousand men.- 

The crusaders traversed Europe by different routes and re- 
assembled at Constantinople. Crossing the Bosphorus, they first 
captured Nicsea, the Turkish capital in Bithynia, and then set out 
across Asia Minor for Syria. The line of their dreary march 
between Nicaea and Antioch was whitened with the bones of 
nearly one half their number. Arriving at Antioch, the survivors 
captured that place and then, after considerable delay, pushed 
on towards Jerusalem. 

When at length the Holy City burst upon their view a perfect 
delirium of joy seized the crusaders. As they moved on they 
took off their shoes and marched with uncovered head and bare 
feet, singing the words of the prophet: "Jerusalem, lift up thine 
eyes, and behold the liberator who comes to break thy chains." 
The city was taken by storm. A terrible slaughter of the infidels 
followed. 

The government which the crusaders established for the regained 
Holy City was a model feudal state, called the Latin Kingdom 
of Jerusalem, the limits of which very nearly coincided with 
the boundaries of ancient Palestine. The code known as the 
Assizes of Jerusalem, which was a late compilation of the rules 
and customs presumably followed by the judges of the little state, 
forms one of the most complete and interesting collections of 
feudal customs in existence. 

1 ISefore the regular armies of the crusaders were ready to move, those who had 
gathered about Peter the Hermit, becoming impatient of delay, urged him to place 
himself at their head and lead them at once to the Holy Land. Dividing command 
of the mixed multitudes with a poor knight called Walter the Penniless, and followed 
by a throng, it is said, of eighty thousand persons, among whom were many women 
and children, the hermit set out for Constantinople by the overland route. Thousands 
of the crusaders perished miserably of hunger and exposure on the march. Those 
who crossed the Bosphorus were surprised by the Turks, and almost all were 
slaughtered. 

'- As Kugler observes, the enormous figures of the chroniclers can only be taken 
to mean "a great many people." They represent, of course, simply vague guesses 
. or estimates. 



§130] RELIGIOUS ORDERS OF KNIGHTHOOD 121 

At the head of the kingdom was placed Godfrey of Bouillon, 
the most devoted of the crusader knights. The prince refused 
the title and vestments of royalty, declaring that he would never 
wear a crown of gold in the city where his Lord and Master had 
worn a crown of thorns. The only title he would accept was that 
of " Baron of the Holy Sepulcher," 

Many of the crusaders, considering their vows to deliver the 
Holy City as now fulfilled, soon set out on their return to their 
homes, some making their way back by sea and some by land. 

130. Origin of the Religious Orders of Knighthood. In the 
interval between the First and the Second Crusade, the two famed 
religious military orders known as the Hospitalers and the Tem- 
plars ^ were formed. A little later, during the Third Crusade, still 
another fraternity, known as the Teutonic Knights, was established. 
The objects of all the orders were the care of the sick and 
wounded crusaders, the entertainment of Christian pilgrims, the 
guarding of the holy places, and ceaseless battling for the Cross. 
These fraternities soon acquired a military fame that was spread 
throughout the Christian world. They were joined by many of the 
most illustrious knights of the West, and through the gifts of the 
pious acquired great wealth and became possessed of numerous 
estates and castles in Europe as well as in Asia. 

131. The Second Crusade (1147-1149); Preaching of St. Ber- 
nard; Failure of the Crusade. In the year 1146 the city of 
Edessa, the outlying bulwark in the northeast towards Mesopo- 
tamia of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, was taken by the Turks 
and the entire population slaughtered or sold into slavery. This 
disaster threw Europe into a state of the greatest alarm lest the 
little Christian kingdom should be overwhelmed and all the holy 
places should again fall into the hands of the infidels. 

1 The Hospitalers, or Knights of St. John, took their name from the fact that the 
organization was first formed among the monks of the Hospital of St. John at Jeru- 
salem ; while the Templars, or Knights of the Temple, were so called because of the 
fact that one of the buildings of the brotherhood occupied the site of Solomon's Temple. 
In the case of the Hospitalers it was monks who added to their ordinary monastic vows 
those of knighthood ; in the case of the Templars it was knights who added to their 
military vows those of religion. Thus were united the seemingly incongruous ideals of 
the monk and the knight. 



122 THE CRUSADES [§132 

The scenes that marked the opening of the First Crusade were 
now repeated in many of the countries of the West. St, Bernard 
of Clairvaux, an eloquent monk, was the second Peter the Hermit 
who went everywhere arousing the warriors of the Cross to the 
defense of the birthplace of their religion. The contagion of the 
enthusiasm seized not merely upon barons, knights, and the com- 
mon people, which classes alone participated in the First Crusade, 
but the greatest sovereigns were now infected by it. Louis VII, 
king of France, was led to undertake the crusade through remorse 
for an act of great cruelty against some of his revolted subjects. 
The Emperor Conrad III of Germany was persuaded to leave the 
affairs of his distracted realms in the hands of God and conse- 
crate himself to the defense of the sepulcher of Christ. 

The best part of the strength of both the German and the 
French division of the expedition was wasted in Asia Minor. 
Mere remnants of the armies joined in Palestine. The siege of 
Damascus, which was now undertaken, proved unsuccessful, and 
the crusaders, broken in spirit, returned home. 

132. The Third Crusade (ii89-ii92); Frederick Barbarossa, 
Saladin, and Richard the Lion-Hearted. The Third Cru- 
sade was caused by the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin, the 
renowned sultan of Egypt. This event occurred in the year 1187. 
The intelligence of the disaster caused the greatest consternation 
and grief throughout Christendom. Three of the great sovereigns 
of Europe, Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, Philip Augustus of 
France, and Richard I of England, assumed the cross, and set 
out, each at the head of a large army, for the recovery of the 
Holy City. The English king, Richard, afterwards given the title 
of Cocur dc Lion, the "Lion-Hearted," in memory of his heroic 
exploits in Palestine, was the central figure among the Christian 
knights of this crusade. 

The German army, attempting the overland route, after meet- 
ing with the usual troubles in eastern Europe from the unfriendli- 
ness of the natives, was decimated in Asia Minor by the hardships 
of the march and the swords of the Turks. The Emperor Fred- 
erick was drowned while crossing a swollen stream, and most of 



§ 133] ^ THE FOURTH CRUSADE 123 

the survivors of his army, disheartened by the loss of their leader, 
soon returned to Germany with little or nothing accomplished. 

The English and French kings took the sea route, and finally 
mustered their forces beneath the walls of Acre, which city the 
Christians were then besieging. After one of the longest and 
most costly sieges they ever carried on in Asia, the crusaders at 
last forced the place to capitulate, in spite of all the efforts of 
Saladin to render the garrison relief. 

For two years Richard contended in vain with Saladin, a 
knightly and generous antagonist according to the chroniclers, 
for possession of the tomb of Christ. He finally concluded with 
him a favorable truce and then set out for home; but while trav- 
ersing Germany in disguise he was discovered and was arrested 
and imprisoned by order of the Emperor Henry VI, who was his 
political enemy. Henry cast his prisoner into a dungeon and, 
notwithstanding the outcry of all Europe that the champion of 
Christianity should suffer such treatment at the hands of a brother 
prince, refused to release him without an enormous ransom, which 
was paid by the English people. 

133. The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) ; Capture of Con- 
stantinople by the Latins. The city of Venice was the rendezvous 
of the Fourth Crusade. It was made up largely of unscrupu- 
lous adventurers and the marine forces of Venice. It was origi- 
nally aimed at Egypt but struck Constantinople. A great share 
of the responsibility for the diversion of the crusade from its 
first designation lies, it seems, at the door of the Venetians, who, 
when it was proposed that the crusaders should undertake to right 
certain alleged wrongs of the imperial family at the Byzantine 
capital, seeing in the proposed adventure an opportunity to 
further their trade interests in the Black Sea regions, took pains 
to insure that the expedition should be launched in that direction. 

The outcome of the crusade was the capture and sack of Con- 
stantinople and the setting up of a Latin prince, Baldwin of 
Flanders, as Emperor of the East (1204). The Empire was now 
remodeled into a feudal state like the Kingdom of Jerusalem 
established by the knights of the First Crusade. Most of the 



124 



THE CRUSADES 



[§133 



Greek islands and certain of the shore lands of the old Empire 
were given to Venice as her share of the spoils. A great part 
of the remaining lands was allotted as fiefs to Frankish knights. 
One of the most interesting of the feudal principalities that arose 
on the ground conquered from the Greeks was the dukedom of 
Athens. Hundreds of Western knights assembled at this capital 
of ancient culture and created there a brilliant feudal court 
which completely captivated the imagination of Europe/ 




Fig. 23. The Horses of St. Mark's. (From a photograph) 

These celebrated bronze horses were among the trophies which the Venetians received 
as their share of the phinder when Constantinople was sacked by the crusaders. They 
were placed over the portico of St. Mark's in Venice. They were carried off to Paris by 
Napoleon during his ascendancy, but upon his downfall were restored to the Venetians. 
In 1915, during the World War, they were lowered and taken to a place of safety 

The Latin Empire of Constantinople, as it was called, lasted 
only a little over half a century (1204-1261). The Greeks, at 
the end of this period, succeeded in regaining the throne, which 
they then held until the capture of Constantinople by the Turks 

in 1453- 

A most regrettable result of the sack of Constantinople by the 
crusaders was the destruction of the numerous masterpieces of 

1 Recall the " Duke Theseus " in Chaucer's Knigfht's Tale of Palamon ami Arcife 
and in Shakespeare's . / Midsummer Nig/ifs Dream. The Frankish dukes of Athens 
maintained their principality till 131 1. 



§134] THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE 125 

art with which the city was crowded, for Constantinople had 
been for nine centuries the chief place of safe deposit for the 
priceless art treasures of the ancient world. The extent of the 
loss suffered by art in the ruthless sack of the city will never be 
known. It would seem as though almost all the bronze and silver 
statues and all the ornamental metal work of the churches and 
other edifices of the city went into the melting pot. 

Still another lamentable consequence of the crusaders' act 
was the weakening of the military strength of the capital. For 
a thousand years Constantinople had been the great bulwark of 
Western civilization against Asiatic barbarism. Its power of resist- 
ance was now broken, with momentous consequences for Western 
Christendom, as we shall learn later (Chapter XIV). 

134. The Children's Crusade (1212). During the interval 
between the Fourth and the Fifth Crusade the religious enthu- 
siasm that had so long agitated the men of Europe came to fill 
with unrest the children, resulting in what is known as the 
Children's Crusade, 

The chief preacher of this crusade was a child about twelve 
years of age, a French peasant lad, named Stephen, who became 
persuaded that Jesus Christ had commanded him to lead a cru- 
sade of children to the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher. The 
children became wild with excitement and flocked in vast crowds 
to the places appointed for rendezvous. Nothing could restrain 
them or thwart their purpose. "Even bolts and bars," says an 
old chronicler, ''could not hold them." The great majority of 
those who collected at the rallying places were boys under twelve 
years of age, but there were also many girls. 

The movement provoked the most diverse views. Some declared 
that it was inspired by the Holy Spirit, and quoted such scriptural 
texts as these to justify the enthusiasm: "A little child shall lead 
them"; "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast 
perfected praise," Others, however, were quite as confident that 
the whole thing was the work of the devil. 

The German children, whose number is estimated at from 
twenty to forty thousand, crossed the Alps and marched down 



126 THE CRUSADES [§135 

the Italian shores looking for a miraculous pathway through 
the sea to Palestine, Beneath the hardships of the journey a 
great part of the little crusaders died or fell out by the way. 
Those reaching Rome were kindly received by the Pope, who 
persuaded them to give up their enterprise and return to their 
homes. 

The French children, numbering thirty thousand, according to 
the chroniclers, set out from the place of rendezvous for Mar- 
seilles. Their leader, Stephen, rode in great state in a chariot 
surrounded by an escort of infantile nobles, who paid him the 
obedience and homage due a superior and sacred being. The 
little pilgrims had no conception of the distance to the Holy 
Land, and whenever a city came in sight eagerly asked if it 
were not Jerusalem, 

Arriving at Marseilles, the children were bitterly disappointed 
that the sea did not open and give them passage to Palestine. 
The greater part, discouraged and disillusioned, now returned 
home; five or six thousand, however, accepting gladly the seem- 
ingly generous offer of two merchants of the city, who proposed 
to take them to the Holy Land free of charge, crowded into 
seven small ships and sailed out of the port of Marseilles. But 
they were betrayed and sold as slaves in Alexandria and other 
Mohammedan slave markets. 

This children's expedition marked at once the culmination 
and the decline of the crusading movement. The fervid zeal 
that inspired the first crusaders was already dying out. "These 
children," said the Pope, referring to the young crusaders, "re- 
proach us with having fallen asleep, whilst they were flying to 
the assistance of the Holy Land." 

135. The Minor Crusades; End of the Kingdom of Jeru- 
salem. The last four expeditions — the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and 
Eighth^ — undertaken by the Christians of Europe against the 

1 The Fifth Crusade (1216-1220) was led by the kings of Hungary and Cyprus, 
Its strength was wasted in Egypt, arid it resulted in nothing. The Sixth Crusade 
(1227-1229), headed by Frederick II of Germany, succeeded in securing from the 
Saracens the restoration of Jerusalem and that of several other cities of Palestine. The 
Seventh Crusade (1249-1254) was under the lead of Louis IX of France, sumamed 



§136] CRUSADES IN EUROPE 127 

infidels of the East may be conveniently grouped as the Minor 
Crusades. They were marked by a less genuine enthusiasm than 
that which characterized particularly the First Crusade, and ex- 
hibited among those taking part in them the greatest variety 
of objects and ambitions. The flame of the Crusades had burned 
itself out, and the fate of the little Christian kingdom in Asia, 
isolated from Europe and surrounded on all sides by bitter ene- 
mies, became each day more and more apparent. Finally, the 
last of the places (Acre) held by the Christians fell into the hands 
of the ]\Ioslems, and with this event the Latin Kingdom of Jeru- 
salem came to an end (1291). The second great combat between 
Mohammedanism and Christianity was over, and '^ silence reigned 
along the shore that had so long resounded with the world's 
debate" (Gibbon). 

136. Crusades in Europe. Notwithstanding the strenuous 
and united efforts which the Christians of Europe put forth 
against the IMohammedans, they did not succeed in extending 
permanently the frontiers of Western civilization in the Orient. 

But in the southwest and the northeast of Europe it was dif- 
ferent. Here the crusading spirit rescued from Moslem and 
pagan large territories, and upon these regained or newly acquired 
lands established a number of little Christian principalities, which 
later grew into states or came to form a portion of states which 
were to play great parts in the history of the following centuries. 
The states whose beginnings are thus connected with the cru- 
sading age are Portugal, Spain, and Prussia. We will say just a 
single word respecting each of them. 

137. Crusades against the Moors in the Iberian Peninsula. 
Just before the actual beginning of the Crusades against the 
Moslems of the East a band of northern knights went to the help 

the Saint. It met with disaster in Egypt. The Eighth Crusade (1270-1272) had for 
leaders St. Louis and Prince Edward of England, afterwards Edward I. Louis directed 
his forces against the Moors about Tunis, in North Africa. Here the king died of the 
plague. Nothing was effected by this division of the expedition. The division led 
by the English prince was, however, more fortunate. Edward succeeded in capturing 
Nazareth and in compelling the sultan of Egypt to agree to a treaty favorable to the 
Christians (1272). 



128 THE CRUSADES [§138 

of the Christians against the Moslems in the west of the Iberian 
peninsula. The issue of this chivalric enterprise was the formation 
of a little feudal principality, the nucleus of the later kingdom 
of Portugal. At the time of the Second Crusade some German 
and English crusaders, on their way to Palestine by sea, stopped 
here and aided the native Christians in the siege and capture 
from the Mohammedans of the important city of Lisbon (1147). 
This gave the little growing state its future capital. Thus Portu- 
gal was, in a very strict sense, a creation of the crusading spirit. 

Then during all the time that the Crusades proper were going 
on in the eastern Mediterranean, the Spanish Christian knights 
were engaged in almost one uninterrupted crusade against the 
Moslem intruders. By the middle of the thirteenth century the 
Christians had crowded the Moors into a small region in the south- 
ern part of the peninsula. Upon the ground thus regained 
there arose a number of small Christian states which finally 
coalesced to form the modern kingdom of Spain. The circum- 
stances attending the origin of this kingdom left a deep impress, 
as we shall learn later, upon all its subsequent history.^ 

138. Crusades by the Teutonic Knights against the Pagan. 
Slavs (1226-1283). At the time of the Crusades all the Baltic 
shore lands lying eastward of the Vistula and which to-day form 
a part of Prussia were held by pagan Slavs. These people, like 
the pagan Saxons of an earlier time, resisted strenuously the 
introduction of Christianity among them. Devoted priests who 
carried the gospel to them, together with their converts, were often 
massacred. Finally, a crusade was preached against them. 

Early in the thirteenth century (1226) some knights of the 
Teutonic Order transferred their crusading efforts to these north- 
ern heathen lands. For the greater part of the century the 
knights carried on what was a desperate and almost continuous 
war of extermination against the pagans. Upon the land wrested 
from them were founded the important fortress-cities of Konigs- 
berg and Marienburg. The surrounding Slav population was 
either destroyed or subjected, and the whole land was gradually 

1 See sect. 224. 



§139] CRUSADES AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES 129 

Germanized. Thus what was originally Slav territory was con- 
verted into a German land, and the basis laid of a principality 
(Duchy of Prussia) which later came to form an important part 
of modern Prussia.^ Thus the crusading zeal of the knight-monks 
contributed to the creation of one of the strongest of modern 
European states. 

138. Crusades against the Albigenses (1209-1229). During 
the crusading age holy wars were preached and waged against 
heretics as well as against infidels and pagans. 

In the south of France, which country since the settlement of 
Marseilles by the Greeks in the sixth century b. c. had been open, 
by way of the sea, to Hellenic, Roman, and Saracenic influences, was 
a sect of Christians called Albigenses,^ who had departed so far 
from the orthodox faith that Pope Innocent III declared them to 
be ''more wicked than Saracens." He therefore, after a vain en- 
deavor to turn them from their errors, called upon the French king, 
Philip II, and his nobles to lead a crusade again the heretics and 
their rich and powerful patron, Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. 

The king held aloof from the enterprise, being fully occupied 
watching his own enemies; but a great number of his nobles 
responded eagerly to the call of the Church. The leader of the 
first crusade (1209-12 13) was Simon de Montfort, a man cruel, 
callous, and relentless beyond belief. A great part of Languedoc, 
the beautiful country of the Albigenses, was made a desert, the 
inhabitants being slaughtered and the cities burned. Upon the 
capture of a single town, Beziers by name, thirty thousand per- 
sons, men, women, and children, were slain. 

In 1229 the fury of a fresh crusade burst upon the Albigenses, 
which resulted in their prince (Raymond VII) ceding the greater 
part of his beautiful but ravaged provinces to Louis IX, king of 
France, and submitting himself to the Church. The Albigensian 
heresy was soon wholly extirpated by the tribunal of the In- 
quisition (sect. 304) which was set up in the country. 

1 See on map of modern Europe how the German territory on the northeast is thrust 
out into the Slavonic mass. 

2 From Albi, the name of a city and district in which their tenets prevailed. 



130 



THE CRUSADES 



[§140 



INFLUENCE UPON EUROPEAN CIVILIZATION OF THE 

CRUSADES 

140. Their Effect upon the Eastern Empire. Among the 
most noteworthy results of the Crusades we may place the preser- 
vation for a time of Constantinople/ The shock of the First Crusade 
rolled back the tide of Turkish conquest, and thus postponed 
the fall of the Eastern Empire, or at least of its capital, for three 
centuries and more, thereby gaining for the young Christian 

civilization of central Europe time suf- 
ficient to consolidate its strength into an 
impregnable bulwark before the return- 
ing tide of Mohammedan invasion swept 
in again upon Christendom. It is al- 
together probable that, had the Seljuk 
Turks been allowed to cross the Bos- 
phorus in the twelfth century, they 
would have carried their conquests much 
farther to the west than their kinsmen, 
the Osmanli, were able to do in the 
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Chap- 
ter XIV). 

Furthermore, the fall of Constanti- 
nople in the twelfth century would have 
meant probably the permanent loss of 
all the literary treasures the city was holding in safe-keeping for 
civilization; for the West was not yet ready, as is shown by the 
vandalism of the men of the Fourth Crusade, to become the ap- 
preciative and reverent guardian of this precious bequest. 

141. Their Effects upon the Towns and upon Commerce 
and Society. The towns gained many political advantages at 
the expense of the crusading barons and princes. Ready money 
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was largely in the hands 
of the burgher class, and in return for the contributions and loans 

1 But for the crime of the men of the Fourth Crusade (sect. 133) the Eastern em- 
perors might possibly have been able to hold the Bosphorus indefinitely against the 
Ottoman Turks. 




Fig. 24. A Medi/Eval 
Windmill. (From an en- 
graving of an abbey and 
its precincts, dating from 
about the middle of the 
fourteenth century) 



§ 142] POLITICAL EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADES 131 

they made to their overlords or suzerains they received charters 
conferring special and valuable privileges. Thus, while power 
and wealth were slipping out of the hands of the nobility, the 
cities and towns were growing in political importance and making 
great gains in the matter of municipal freedom. 

The Holy Wars further promoted the prosperity of the towns by 
giving a great impulse to commercial enterprise. During this period 
Venice, Pisa, and Genoa acquired great wealth and reputation 
through the fostering of their trade by the needs of the crusaders 
and the opening up of the East. The Mediterranean was whitened 
with the sails of their transport ships, which were constantly 
plying between the various ports of Europe and the towns of the 
Syrian coast. Also, various arts, manufactures, and inventions 
(among these the windmill^ and probably the mariner's compass) 
before unknown in Europe were introduced from Asia. This en- 
richment of the civilization of the West with the "spoils of the 
East" we may allow to be emblemized by the famous bronze 
horses that the crusaders carried off from Constantinople and set 
up before St. Mark's Cathedral in Venice (Fig. 23). 

The effects of the Crusades upon the social life of the Western 
nations were marked and important. Giving opportunity for 
romantic adventure, they aided powerfully in the development of 
that institution of knighthood which, as we have seen, nourished 
many of the noblest virtues and most exalted sentiments of modern 
society (sect. 105). And under this head must be placed the 
general refining influence that contact with the more cultured 
nations of the East had upon the semibarbarous folk of the West. 
These influences, which we designate the social, were felt of course 
in the country as well as in the town, but their more permanent 
impress was probably left upon the life of the urban communities. 

142. Their Political Effects. The. Crusades, as we have 
noticed in another connection (sect. 95), helped to break down 
the power of the feudal aristocracy and give prominence to the 

1 Windmills were chiefly utilized in the Netherlands, where they were used to pump 
the water from the oversoaked lands, and thus became the means of creating the most 
important part of what is now the kingdom of Holland. 



132 THE CRUSADES [§ 143 

kings and the people. Many of the nobles who set out on the 
expeditions never returned, and their estates, through failure of 
heirs, escheated to the crown; while many more wasted their 
fortunes in meeting the expenses of their undertaking. Thus the 
nobility were greatly weakened in numbers and influence, and 
the power and patronage of the kings correspondingly increased. 
This process of the disintegration of feudalism and the growth of 
monarchy is to be traced most distinctly in France, the cradle 
and center of the crusading movement. 

The laying of the foundations of the later states of Portugal, 
Spain, and Prussia should also be noticed here as showing how 
the Crusades helped to create the map of modern Europe. 

143. Their Effects upon the Native Literatures and the In- 
tellectual Life of Europe. In no realm were the effects of the 
Crusades more positive than in the field of literature. From the 
East was brought in a vast amount of fresh literary material con- 
sisting of the traditions of great events like the siege of Troy, and 
of great heroes, such as Solomon and Alexander the Great. These 
legends, exaggerated and distorted and curiously mingled with 
the folklore of the Western peoples, came now to form the basis 
of a vast literature consisting of romances, epic poems, and pious 
tales, iniinite in variety and form. In this way the native 
literatures of Europe were enriched and their growth greatly 
stimulated. 

Furthermore, the knowledge of geography and of the science 
and learning of the East gained by the crusaders through their 
expeditions greatly stimulated the Latin intellect and helped to 
awaken in western Europe that mental activity which resulted 
finally in the great intellectual outburst known as the Renaissance 
(Chapter XVIII). . 

144. Their Influence on Geographical Discovery. Lastly, 
the incentive given to geographical exploration led various travel- 
ers, such as the celebrated Venetian Marco Polo (sect. 158), to 
range over the most remote countries of Asia. Nor did the matter 
end here. Even that spirit of maritime enterprise and adventure 
which rendered illustrious the close of the Middle Ages, inspiring 



§ 144] REFERENCES AND STUDY TOPICS 133 

the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, and Magellan, may be 
traced back to that lively interest in geographical matters, that 
curiosity respecting the remote regions of the earth, awakened by 
the expeditions of the crusaders.^ 

These various growths and movements, commercial, social, polit- 
ical, intellectual, and geographical, in European society, which, 
though not originated by the Crusades, were nevertheless given a 
fresh impulse by them, we shall trace out in following chapters. 

Selections from the Sources. Chronicles of the Crusades (Bohn). Read the 
chronicle by Geoffrey, who writes as an eyewitness of scenes of the Third 
Crusade. Archer, T. A., Crusade of Richard I (Enghsh History by Contem- 
porary Writers). Translations and Reprints, vol. i, No. 4, " Letters of the 
Crusaders"; also vol. iii, No. i, "The Fourth Crusade." Robinson, J. H., 
Readings in European History, vol. i, chap. xv. 

References (Modern). Burr, G. L., The Year 1000 and the Antecedents of 
the Crusades (in A?nerican Historical Review for April, 1901, vol. vi. No. 3 
(shows the unhistorical character of the tradition of the "millennial terror"). 
Archer, T. A., and Kingsford, C. L., The Crusades. Cox, G. W., The Crusades. 
Emerton, E., MedicEval Ejirope, chap. xi. Adam.S, G. B., Civilization during 
the Middle Ages, chap. xi. MiCHAUD, J. F., Histojy of the Crtisades, 3 vols, 
(very interesting, but in part discredited through a new appraisement of the 
trustworthiness of the sources for the Crusades). Pears, E., The Fall of 
Constantinople (the best account of the Fourth Crusade). Gray, G. Z., The 
Children's Cnisade. Gibbon, E., The Declifte and Fall, chaps. Iviii-lxi. Lane- 
Poole, S., Saladin, and the Fall of the Kingdom of ferusalem. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The speech of Pope Urban II at the Council 
of Clermont : Ogg, F. A., Source Book of Mediceval History, pp. 284-288. 
2. Saint Bernard and his preaching of the Second Crusade : Morison, J. C, 
The Life and Times of St. Bernard, pp. 415-428. 3. Stories from the Crusades 
which formed material for literature : Munro, D. C, and Sellery, G. C, 
Medieval Civilization, pp. 269-276. 

1 Colonel Henry Yule, speaking of the influence of the travels and writings of 
Marco Polo, says : " The spur which his book eventually gave to geographical studies, 
and the beacon which it hung out at the eastern extremities of the earth, helped to 
guide the aims ... of the greater son of the rival republic. His work was at least a link 
in the providential chain which at last dragged the New World to light." — Introduction 
to The Book of Ser Marco Polo (London, 1875). 



CHAPTER XIII 

SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY; DECLINE OF ITS 
TEMPORAL POWER 

145. Preliminary Survey : the Papacy at its Height. In an 
earlier chapter on the Empire and the Papacy we related the begin- 
nings of the contention for supremacy between Pope and Emperor. 
In the present chapter we shall first speak of the Papacy at the 
height of its power, and then tell how, as the popes, with the Em- 
pire ruined, seemed about to realize their ideal of a universal eccle- 
siastical and secular monarchy, its temporal power was shattered 
by a new opposing force, — the rising nations. 

We have already noticed the work of some of the upholders 
of the Papacy, notably that of Pope Gregory VII. Gregory had 
many worthy successors. The most eminent of these were Alex- 
ander III (1159-1181) and Innocent III (1198-1216), under 
whom the power of the Papacy was at its height. In the paragraphs 
immediately following we shall glance at some of the events which 
signalized the pontificates of these representatives of the papal 
supremacy. The events we shall touch upon are those which 
record the triumph of the Papacy first over the Empire and then 
over the kings of France and England. 

146. Pope Alexander III and Emperor Frederick Bar- 
barossa. A little after the settlement known as the Concordat of 
Worms (sect. 119) the first of the House of Hohenstaufen came 
to the German throne, and then began a sharp contention, lasting, 
with intervals of strained peace, for more than a century, between 
the emperors of this proud family and the successive occupants 
of the papal chair. This contest was practically the continua- 
tion, although under changed conditions of course, of the strug- 
gle begun long before to decide which should be supreme, the 
'^ world priest" or the "world king." We can here do no more 

'34 



§ 147] THE POPE AND PHILIP AUGUSTUS 135 

than simply note the issue of the quarrel in so far as it concerned 
Pope Alexander III and one of the most noted of the Hohenstaufen, 
Frederick Barbarossa, the crusader. 

After maintaining the contest for many years Frederick, van- 
quished and humiliated, was constrained to seek reconciliation 
with the Pope. Then followed the Peace of Venice (1177) with 
its dramatic incidents. In front of St. Mark's Cathedral, in the 
presence of a vast throng, Frederick, overwhelmed by a sudden 
emotion of awe and reverence, cast off his mantle and flung him- 
self at the feet of the venerable pontiff, who raised him from the 
ground and gave him the kiss of peace. That was for the imperial 
power its second Canossa. Precisely one hundred years had 
passed since the humiliation of the Emperor Henry IV (sect. 118). 

147. Pope Innocent III and Philip Augustus of France. 
When one of the most powerful and self-reliant of all the emperors 
after Charlemagne was forced thus to bow before the papal throne, 
we are not surprised to find the kings of the different countries 
of Europe subjecting themselves obediently to the same all-pervad- 
ing authority. French and English history, of the period covered 
by the pontificate of Innocent III, both afford a striking illustra- 
tion of the subject relation which the sovereigns of Europe had 
come to sustain to the Roman See, 

The French throne was at this time held by Philip Augustus 
( 1 180-12 23). On some pretext Philip had put away his wife 
and entered into another marriage alliance. Pope Innocent III, 
as the censor of the morals of kings as well as of the morals of 
their subjects, commanded him to take back his discarded queen, 
and upon his refusal to do so, laid France under an interdict. 
Philip was finally constrained to yield obedience to the Pope. 
This triumph of the Papal See over so strong and imperious a 
sovereign has been pronounced "the proudest trophy in the 
scutcheon of Rome." 

148. Pope Innocent III and King John of England. The 
story of Innocent's triumph over King John (i 199-12 16) of Eng- 
land is familiar. The see of Canterbury falling vacant, John or- 
dered the monks who had the right of election to give the place 



136 SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY [§ 149 

to a favorite of his. They obeyed; but the Pope immediately 
declared the election void, and caused the vacancy to be filled 
with one of his own friends, Stephen Langton. John declared 
that the Pope's archbishop should never enter England as primate, 
and proceeded to confiscate the estates of the see. Innocent now 
laid all England under an interdict, excommunicated John, and 
incited the French king, Philip Augustus, to undertake a crusade 
against the contumacious rebel. 

The outcome of the matter was that John was compelled to 
yield to the power of the Church. He gave back the lands he had 
confiscated, acknowledged Langton to be the rightful primate of 
England, and even went so far as to give England and Ireland to 
the Pope, receiving them back as a perpetual fief ( 12 13) . In token 
of his vassalage he agreed to pay to the Roman See the annual 
sum of one thousand marks sterling. This tribute money was 
actually, paid, though irregularly, until the reign of Edward III 
(sect. 152). 

149. The Mendicant Orders, or Begging Friars/ The imme- 
diate successors of Innocent III found a strong support for their 
authority in two new monastic orders known as the Domini- 
can and the Franciscan. They were so named after their re- 
spective founders, St. Dominic (1170-1221) of Old Castile and 
St. Francis (about 1 182-1226) of Assisi, in Italy. The principles 
on which these fraternities were established were very different 
from those v/hich had shaped all previous monastic orders. 
Speaking in general terms, until now the monk had sought 
cloistral solitude primarily in order to escape from the world, 
and through penance and prayer and contemplation to work 
out his own salvation. In the new orders the members instead 
of withdrawing from the world were to remain in it and give 
themselves wholly to the work of rescuing and saving others. 
This virtue of self-forgetting service was incarnate especially in 
St. Francis and his early followers. In exalting this virtue they 
rendered a distinct and timely service to European morality. Just 
as the early monks, through the emphasis laid on the virtue of 

1 From fratrcs, frins, "brethren." 



§ 149] THE MENDICANT ORDERS 137 

chastity, made a needed protest against the sensuality of a senile 
and decadent civilization (sect. 27), so did the Franciscans, 
through the stress laid on the virtue of self-sacrifice for others, 
make a needed protest against the selfishness and hardness of an 
age that seemed to have forgotten the claims of the poor, the 
suffering, and the lowly. 

Again, the orders were also as orders to renounce all earthly 
possessions, and, ^'espousing Poverty as a bride," to rely entirely 
for support upon the daily and voluntary alms of the pious. ^ 
Hitherto, while the individual members of a monastic order must 
espouse extreme poverty, the house, or fraternity, might possess 
any amount of communal wealth. This had led to indolence 
and laxity of discipline, and the espousal of poverty by the new 
brotherhood was a protest against the luxurious habits of the old 
orders. 

There was at first a wide difference between the two fraternities. 
St. Francis and the disciples whom his boundless self-sacrificing 
charity drew about him devoted themselves, in imitation of Christ 
and the apostles, to preaching the gospel to the poor and outcast 
and to visiting those whp were sick and in prison. St. Dominic 
made his appeal to the higher and cultured class. He conceived 
his mission to be the combating of heresy, with which the intel- 
lectual ferment of the times had begun to fill Christendom. 

These different tendencies of the two great founders are tersely 
expressed in the respective titles given them: St. Francis was 
called the ''P'ather of the poor"; St. Dominic, the "Hammer 
of the heretics." But notwithstanding that the differing genius 
of the two saints left at first a distinct impress upon their respec- 
tive orders, still each fraternity in time borrowed much from the 
other and the two finally became very much alike. 

The new fraternities grew and spread with marvelous rapidity, 
and in less than a generation they had quite overshadowed all 

1 The Mendicant Friars soon came to interpret their vow of poverty more Hberally, 
and believed that they met its obligations when they put the title of the property 
they acquired in the hands of the Pope, while they themselves simply enjoyed the 
use of it. The new fraternities grew in time to be among the richest of the monastic 
orders. 



138 SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY [§ 150 

the old monastic orders of the Church. The popes conferred 
upon them many and special privileges. They in turn became 
the stanchest friends and supporters of the Roman See. They 
were to the Papacy of the thirteenth century what the Benedictines 
had been to Pope Gregory VII, or what the later Order of the 
Jesuits was to be to the papal Church of the period of the 
Reformation. 

150. The Revolt of the Nations. The fourteenth century 
marks the turning point in the history of the temporal power 
of the Papacy. In the course of that century the lay rulers in 
several of the leading countries of Europe, supported by their 
subjects, succeeded in regaining their lost independence. France, 
Germany, and England successively revolted — the expression is 
not too strong — against the Roman See and formally denied the 
right of the Pope to interfere in their political affairs. 

But it should be carefully noted that the leaders of this revolt 
against the secular domination of the Papacy did not think of 
challenging the spiritual authority of the Pope as the supreme 
head of the Church. Their attitude was wholly like that of the 
Italians of our own day, who, while dispossessing the Pope of the 
last remnant of his temporal sovereignty, abate nothing of their 
veneration for him as the Vicar of God in all things moral and 
spiritual. 

151. Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France. It 
was during the pontificate of Boniface VIII (i 294-1303) that 
the secular authority of the popes received a severe blow and 
began rapidly to decline. Boniface held Gregory VII's exalted 
views of the prerogatives of the papal office. Taking as his war- 
rant these words of Scripture, " Behold I have set thee over king- 
doms and empires,"^ he assumed an attitude towards the lay 
rulers which, was certain to bring the ecclesiastical and civil au- 
thorities into angry and violent collision. In the year 1296 he 
issued a bull in which, under pain of excommunication, he forbade 
all ecclesiatical persons, without papal permission, to pay taxes 
in any form levied by lay rulers. All civil rulers of whatsoever 

1 Jer. i. 10. 



Lands of the 
HOLY R03IAN EMPIRE 

under the FrBnconlan Emperors !) r , , — ^ 

10S4.11S5 ^{ — -yrsT^c^^ 

100 150 200 250 •"'ri ^ '^CjV 



BALTIC SEA 




§ 152] THE POPES AT AVIGNON 139 

name — baron, duke, prince, king, or emperor — who should 
presume to impose upon ecclesiastics taxes of any kind were also 
to incur the same sentence. 

Philip of France regarded the papal claims as an encroachment 
upon the civil authority. The contention between him and the 
Pope speedily grew into a bitter and undignified quarrel. In one 
of his letters to Boniface, Philip addressed the pontiff in words of 
unseemly and studied rudeness. Phijip was bold because he knew 
that his people were with him. The popular feeling was given 
expression in a famous States-General which the king summoned 
in 1302, and in another called together the next year. The three 
estates of the realm — the nobility, the clergy, and the commons — 
declared that the Pope had no authority in France in political 
matters; that the French king had no superior save God. 

The end was soon reached. At Anagni, in Italy, a band of 
soldiers in the French pay, with every indignity, accompanied by 
blows, made Boniface a prisoner. After three days he was set 
free by friends and returned to Rome, only, however, to be there 
made the victim of fresh insults. In a few days he died, broken- 
hearted, it is said, at the age of eighty-seven (1303). 

By all historians of the rise and decline of the temporal power 
of the popes, the scene at Anagni is placed for historical instruc- 
tion alongside that enacted more than two centuries earlier at 
Canossa (sect. 118). The contrasted scenes cannot fail to im- 
press one deeply with the vast vicissitudes in the fortunes of the 
mediaeval Papacy. 

152. Removal of the Papal Seat to Avignon (1309-1376) ; 
Revolt of Germany and England. In 1309, through the concur- 
rence of various influences, the papal seat was removed from 
Rome to Avignon, in Provence, adjoining the frontier of France. 
Here it remained for a space of nearly seventy years, an era 
known in Church history as the " Babylonian Captivity." While 
it was established here all the popes were Frenchmen and their 
policies were largely dictated by the French kings. Under these 
circumstances it was but natural that outside of France there 
should be stirred up a more and more angry protest against the 



140 SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY [§ 153 

interference of the popes in civil matters. The measures taken 
at this time by the national assemblies of Germany and England, 
in both of which countries a national sentiment was springing up, 
show how completely the Papacy had lost prestige as an inter- 
national power. 

In 1338 the German princes, with whom rested the right of 
electing the German king, in opposing the papal claims declared 
that the German Emperor derived all his powers from God through 
them and not from the Pope. The German Diet indorsed this 
declaration, and the principle that the German Emperor, as to 
his election and the exercise of his functions, is independent of 
the Roman See became from that time forward a part of the 
German constitution. 

A little later (in 1366), during tlje reign of Edward III, the 
English Parliament, acting in a like spirit and temper, put an end 
to English vassalage to Rome by formally refusing to pay the 
tribute pledged by King John'^ and by repudiating wholly the 
claims of the popes upon England as a fief of the Holy See. 

153. The Great Schism (1378-1417). The stirring of the 
national sentiment in several of the countries of Europe was not 
the only disastrous result to the Papacy of the Babylonian exile. 
The discontent awakened among the Italians by the situation of 
the papal court led to an open rupture between them and the 
French party. In 1378 the opposing factions each elected a pope, 
and thus there were two heads of the Church, one at Avignon and 
the other at Rome. Such was the beginning of the Great Schism. 

The spectacle of two rival .popes, each claiming to be the right- 
ful successor of St. Peter, naturally gave the reverence which the 
world had so generally held for the Roman See a rude shock, and 
one from which it never fully recovered. 

154. The Church Councils of Pisa (1409) and Constance 
(1414-1418). For the lifetime of a generation all Western Chris- 
tendom was deeply agitated by the bitter and unseemly quarrel. 
No peaceful solution of the difficulty seemed possible. Some 
even favored a resort to force. The faculties of the University 

1 See sect. 14S. The payment of this tribute had fallen in arrears. 



§ 155] CHURCH COUNCIL OF CONSTANCE 141 

of Paris invited suggestions as to the best means . of ending 
the schism. They received ten thousand written opinions. The 
drift of these was in favor of a general council. Finally, in 1409, 
a council of the Church assembled at Pisa for the purpose of quiet- 
ing the unfortunate feud. This council deposed both popes 
and elected Alexander V as the supreme head of the Church. But 
matters instead of being mended hereby were only made worse; 
for neither of the deposed pontiffs would lay down his authority 
in obedience to the demands of the council, and consequently there 
were now three popes instead of two. 

In 1414 another council was called at Constance for the settle- 
ment of the growing dispute. One of the claimants resigned and 
the other two were deposed. A new pope was then elected, the 
choice of the assembly falling upon an Italian cardinal, who be- 
came Pope Martin V (141 7). In his person the Catholic world 
was again united under a single spiritual head. The schism was 
outwardly healed, but the wound had been too deep not to leave 
permanent scars upon the Church.^ 

The Roman pontiffs, although the battles of the lost cause 
were fought over again and again in different countries, were 
never able, after the events of the fourteenth century, to exercise 
such authority over the kings of Europe or exact from them 
such obedience in civil affairs as had been possible for the popes 
of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The splendid ideal of 
Hildebrand, though so nearly realized, had at last, as to one 
half of what he purposed, proved an utter failure. 

155. The Papacy remains a Spiritual Theocracy. We say 
that the Roman pontiffs failed as to one half of their purpose ; 
for while they failed to make good their supremacy in temporal 
affairs, they did succeed — in opposition to a party which wished 
to limit the spiritual authority of the Papacy by a general council 

1 Aside from the settlement of the papal feud, the Council of Constance is noted for 
the trial and condemnation by it of the Bohemian reformer Huss as a teacher of heresy 
(sect. 235). The most reprehensible part of this affair was the imprisonment and harsh 
treatment of Huss before his conviction ; for this was in direct violation of the safe- 
conduct which the Emperor Sigismund had given him, relying upon which the reformer 
had come to the Council. 



142 SUPREMACY OF THE PAPACY [§ 155 

of the Church — in establishing and perpetuating an absolute 
dominion in all matters of faith and doctrine. 

And so the Papacy, though its temporal power has been en- 
tirely taken from it, and its spiritual authority rejected in gen- 
eral by the northern nations, still remains, as Macaulay says, 
''not in decay, not a mere antique, but full of life and youthful 
vigour." The Pope is to-day, in the view of more than half of 
Christendom, the infallible head of a Church that, in the famous 
words of the brilliant writer just quoted, "was great and respected 
before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, before the Frank had 
passed the Rhine, when Grecian eloquence still flourished in 
Antioch, when idols were still worshiped in the temple of Mecca. 
And she may still exist in undiminished vigour when some 
traveler from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast solitude, 
take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge to sketch the 
ruins of St. Paul's." 

Selections from the Sources. Henderson, E. F., Select Historical Docu- 
tfieiiis, p. 430, "John's Concession of England to the Pope"; p. 432, "The 
Bull ' Clericis Laicos.'" The Mirror of Perfection (ed. by Paul Sabatier). This 
is the life of St. Francis written by a companion and disciple. It is a wonderful 
story simply and lovingly told. 

References (Modern). Bryce, J., The Holy Romait Empire, chaps, xi and 
xiii. Pastor, L., The Histo)y of the Popes, vol. i (Catholic). Emerton, E., 
Mediieval Europe, sections of chaps, ix and x. Barry, W., 77^.? Papal Monarchy, 
chaps, xviii-xxv. Balzani, U., The Popes and the Hohenstaiifen. ToUT, T. F., 
The Empire and the Papacy, chaps, xi, xiv, xvi, and xxi. Sabatier, P., Life of 
St. Francis of Assisi (a book of genius and spiritual insight). Creighton, M., 
Histoiy of the Papacy, vol. i, " The Great Schism ; the Council of Constance." 

Topics for Class Reports, i. St. Francis of Assisi and the world into which 
he came: Jessopp, A., The Coming of the Friars, pp. 2-23. 2. St. Dominic 
and the Friars in England : Jessopp, A., The Coming of the Friars, pp. 23-52. 
3. The quarrel between Pope Boniface VIII and Philip the Fair of France: 
Emerton, E., The Beginnings of Modern Europe, pp. 11 6- 11:3. 



CHAPTER XIV 
MONGOLIAN CONQUESTS AND SETTLEMENTS IN EUROPE 

156. The Three Invasions. We have witnessed two invasions 
of Europe since the dissolution, in the fifth century of our era, of 
the imperial Roman government in the West — one by the Teu- 
tonic tribes from the North and another by the Arabians from 
the South — -and have noted the effects of each upon the course 
of European history. Our attention is now drawn to a third in- 
vasion, or, rather, series of invasions, this time from the East, 
by nomadic Mongolian races — the Hungarians, the Mongols 
proper, and the Ottoman Turks. 

The ultimate results for European civilization of the Teutonic 
invasion were, on the whole, good. The consequences, direct and 
indirect, of the Arabian invasion were mixed, and it would be 
difficult to make an appraisement of its net effects. On the other 
hand, the results of the Mongolian conquests, aside from the 
Hungarian intrusion, were almost wholly disastrous, as we shall 
learn, to European civilization. Through the Mongol conquests 
the growth of the promising Russian nation was for a long time 
checked; while through the conquests of the Ottoman Turks all 
the races of southeastern Europe were subjected for centuries to 
the degrading domination of a race alien in blood, in social insti- 
tutions, and in religious belief. 

157. The Hungarians. We have already seen the first of these 
non- Aryan intruders — the Magyars, or Hungarians — adding to 
the turmoil and terror created throughout Europe in the ninth 
and tenth centuries by the Northmen and Saracens (sect. 92). 
During this period they established themselves on the middle 
Danube, and laid there the foundations of the important kingdom 
of Hungary, which was destined to play a significant role in 

143 



144 MONGOLIANS IN EUROPE [§ 158 

European history. In marked contrast to almost every other 
people of Mongolian origin, the Hungarians in course of time 
adopted the manners, customs, and religion of the peoples about 
them^ — became, in a word, thoroughly Europeanized, and then 
for a long time thereafter were a main defense of Christian Europe 
against other invading tribes — Mongols and Ottoman Turks — of 
the same great human stock. 

158. The Mongols. Two centuries and more after the intru- 
sion into Europe of the Hungarians, the Mongols (or Tatars), 


















Fig. 25. Hut-Wagon of the Medieval Tatars. (From Yule's 
Boo A' of Ser Marco Polo) 

The wandering Scyths who dwell 

In latticed huts high-poised on easy wheels. 

/EsCHYLUS, Prom. Vinci., 709-710; quoted by Yule 

untamed and unbelievably cruel nomads bred on the steppes of 
central Asia, that nursery of conquering races, appeared as 
marauders on the eastern frontiers of Europe. The outgoing 
point of their savage expeditions was Mongolia. Their first great 
chieftain was Jenghiz Khan ( 1 206-1 227), the most terrible scourge 
that ever afflicted the human race. At the head of innumer- 
able hordes composed largely of Turkish tribes, callous and pitiless 
in their slaughterings as though their victims belonged to another 
species than themselves, Jenghiz traversed with sword and torch a 

1 They were won to Christianity in the tenth century. See above, sect. 126. 



§158] 



THE MONGOL CONQUESTS 



145 



great part of Asia. He conquered northern China, and then turning 
westward overran Turkestan and Persia. Cities disappeared as he 
advanced; populous plains were transformed into silent deserts. 
Before death overtook him he had extended his authority to the 
Dnieper in Russia and to the valley of the Indus. Even in death 




The Mongol Empire under Jenghiz Khan and his Immediate 
Successors (thirteenth century) 

The shaded area shows the countries either under the direct rule of the Mongols or 
tributary to them 

he claimed his victims: at his tomb forty maidens were slain that 
their spirits might go to serve him in the other world. 

The vast domains of Jenghiz passed into the hands of his son 
Oktai (d. 1 241), a worthy successor of the great conqueror. He 
pushed outwards still farther the boundaries of the empire in the 
east as well as in the west of Asia, and made a threatening inva- 
sion of Europe. In the space of two or three terrible years 
(1238-1241) almost half of Europe (a large part of Russia, 
Poland, and Hungary) was pitilessly ravaged. 



146 MONGOLIANS IN EUROPE [§ 159 

One of the most noted of the successors of Oktai was Kublai 
Khan (1259-1294), who made Cambalu, the modern Peking, his 
royal seat, and there received ambassadors and visitors from all 
parts of the world. It was at the court of this prince that the 
celebrated Italian traveler Marco Polo resided many years and 
gained that valuable and quickening knowledge of the Far East 
which he communicated to Europe in his remarkable work of 
travels and observations. 

Upon the death of Kublai Khan the immoderately extended 
and loosely knit empire fell into disorder and separated into 
many petty states. It was restored by Timur, or Tamerlane 
( 1 369-1405), who seems arrogantly to have set about reducing 
the whole earth to obedience. His dominions came to embrace 
a great part of Asia. 

Timur's immense empire crumbled to pieces after his death. 
His descendant Baber invaded India (1525) and established 
there what became known as the Kingdom of the Great Moguls. 
This Mongol state lasted over two hundred years, — until de- 
stroyed by the English in the eighteenth century. The mag- 
nificence of the court of the Great Moguls at Delhi and Agra is 
one of the most splendid traditions of the East. These foreign 
rulers gave India some of her finest architectural monuments. 
The mausoleum at Agra, known as the Taj Mahal, is one of the 
most beautiful structures in the world.^ 

159. Historical Results of the Mongol Outbreak. Asia has 
never recovered from the terrible devastation wrought by the 
Mongol conquerors. Many districts swarming with life were 
swept clean of their population by these destroyers of the race 
and have remained to this day desolate as the tomb. "Were noth- 
ing to stop the increase of population from this hour till the day 
of judgment," writes an old chronicler, "it would not reach one 
tenth of what it was before Jenghiz Khan's coming." 

1 Wherever we find an upspringing of art and architecture under the Mongols we 
shall not be wrong in attributing it to the influence upon them of the civilizations with 
which they came in contact in China, Persia, India, and western Asia. Their architects 
and artisans were generally furnished by the conquered races or by the cities of 
western Europe. 



§ 159] RESULTS OF MONGOL CONQUESTS 147 

But it is the relation of the Mongol eruption to the history of 
the West that chiefly concerns us at present. This revolution had 
significance for European history, as we have already intimated, 
almost solely on account of the Mongols having laid the yoke 
of their power for a long time — for about three centuries — 
upon the Eastern Slavs. This was some such calamity for Russia 
as the later conquests of the Ottoman Turks, of which we shall 
speak directly, were for the lands of southeastern Europe, This 




Fig. 26. The Taj Mahal at Agra. (From a photograph) 

This magnificent monument was erected by the Mogul emperor Shah Jehan (1628-1658), 
for a favorite wife who died in 1631 

Tatar domination, as we shall learn, left deep and permanent traces 
upon the Russian character and upon Russian history (sect. 239). 
But there was some good issuing out of so much evil. As a 
consequence of the establishment of the extended empire of the 
Mongols there was better communication on the land side between 
Europe and eastern Asia than had ever existed before or was 
destined to exist again until the construction in our own day of 
the Trans-Siberian Railroad. The way was long and wearisome 
but comparatively safe, and consequently it was traversed back 
and forth by embassies between the European courts and the 
Mongol potentates and by missionary-monks, artisans, merchants, 



148 MONGOLIANS IN EUROPE [§ 160 

and explorers. Marco Polo is the type and symbol of it all. 
Through this means there were brought into Europe from the 
Far East various arts, ideas, and inventions which undoubtedly 
contributed to the revival of culture in the West and to the 
inauguration of a new age for the European peoples. 

160. The Beginnings of the Ottoman^ Empire. The latest, 
most permanent, and most important historically of all the Mon- 
golian sovereignties was that established by the Ottoman Turks. 
The nucleus of this great empire was a little state set up in Asia 
Minor about the middle of the thirteenth century by a band of 
Turkish warriors. Gradually the Ottoman princes subjected to 
their rule the surrounding tribes and at the same time seized 
upon province after province of the Asiatic possessions of the 
Byzantine emperors. During the latter half of the fourteenth 
century a large part of the regions that came to be known as 
Turkey in Europe fell into their hands. 

161. The Janizaries. The conquests of the Turks were greatly 
aided by a remarkably efficient body of soldiers known as the 
Janizaries, which was organized early in the fourteenth century. 
This select corps was composed at first of the fairest children 
of Christian captives. When war ceased to furnish recruits, the 
sultans levied a tribute of children on their Christian subjects. 
At one time this tribute amounted to two thousand boys yearly. 
This method of recruiting the corps was maintained for about 
three hundred years. The boys, who were generally received at 
the age of about eight, were brought up in the Mohammedan faith 
and carefully trained in military service. These '' infant proselytes 
of war" formed a military body that was one of the chief instru- 
ments in the creation of the Ottoman Empire. 

162. The Fall of Constantinople (1453). The fall of Con- 
stantinople was delayed for a time by the attacks of the Mongols 
upon 'the Ottomans in Asia." But finally, in the year 1453, 
Mohammed II the Great laid siege to the capital with a vast army 

1 From Othman I (1288-1526), or Osman, whence not only Ottoman^ but Osmanlis, 
the favorite name which the Turks apply to themselves. 

2 The Mongols of Tamerlane inflicted a decisive defeat upon the Ottomans, under 
Bajazet, in the battle of Angora (in Asia Minor), 1402. 



§162] 



THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 



149 



and fleet. After a short investment the place was taken by storm. 
Of the hundred thousand inhabitants of the capital many thou- 
sands were slain and above fifty thousand made slaves. The 
Cross on the dome of St. Sophia was replaced by the Crescent. 

Thus fell New Rome into the hands of the barbarians of the 
East almost an exact millennium after Old Rome had passed into 
the possession of the barbarians of the West. Its fall was one 




The Ejmpire of the Ottoman Turks about 1464 



of the most harrowing and fate-laden events in history. As 
Mohammed, like Scipio at Carthage, gazed upon the ruined city 
and the empty palace of Constant ine, he is said, impressed by the 
mutability of fortune, to have repeated musingly the lines of the 
Persian poet Firdusi: "The spider's web is the curtain in Caesar's 
palace; the owl is the sentinel on the watchtower of Afrasiab."^ 
The Turks have ever remained quite insensible to the influences 
of European civilization. They were alv/ays looked upon as in- 
truders in Europe, and their presence there led to several of the 

1 Afi-asiab is the name of a personage who figures in the historical legends of 
Persia, 



ISO MONGOLIANS IN EUROPE [§162 

most sanguinary wars of modern times. As their power declined 
they were gradually dispossessed of their conquests, and by the 
end of the second decade of the twentieth century had been virtu- 
ally driven from Europe, just as the Mohammedan Moors, four 
or five centuries earlier, had been expelled from the southwestern 
corner of the continent by the Christian chivalry of Spain. 

Selections from the Sources. The Book of Ser Marco Polo, 2 vols, (trans, 
by Henry Yule ; new ed. revised by Henri Cordier). The best part of these 
volumes is condensed in Noah Brooks' The Stoiy of Marco Polo. Marco Polo 
resided seventeen years at the court of Kublai Khan at Cambalu, the modern 
Peking. He saw the Mongol court at the time of its greatest brilliancy and 
gave Europe a vivid description of what he observed and heard in an account 
which our growing knowledge of the Far East is giving a constantly higher 
reputation for accuracy and honesty. 

References (Modern). Howorth, H. H., IIisto?y of the Mongols from the 
Ninth to the AUneteenth Century, 3 parts (the best and most comprehensive 
work on the subject). Creasy, E. S., History of the Ottoman Turks, vol. i, 
chaps, i-vi. Gibbon, E., The Decline and Fall, chaps. Ixiv-lxviii. Mijatovich, 
C, Constantine, the Last Emperor of the Greeks ; or the Conquest of Constanti- 
nople by the Turks, A.D. 1433 (the best account in English). PooLE, S. L., 
The Stoty of Turkey, chaps, i-vii. Freeman, E. A., The Ottoman Power in 
Europe, chaps, i-iv. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Marco Polo at the Mongol court: Brooks, N., 
The Stoiy of Marco Polo, pp. 111-162. 2. The Janizaries: Oman, C. W. C, 
The Byzantitie Empire, pp. 324, 325; Creasy, E. S., HistoVy of the Ottoman 
Turks, vol. i, pp. 21-24, 161. 3. The Conquest of Constantinople: Oman, 
C. W. C, The Byzantine Empire, pp. 343-350 ; Gibbon, E., Decline and Fall, 
chap. Ixviii. 



CHAPTER XV 
THE GROWTH OF THE TOWNS 

163. The Barbarians and the Roman Cities. The old Roman 
towns, as points of attack and defense, suffered much during the 
period of the barbarian invasions. When the storm had passed, 
many of the once strong-walled towns lay "rings of ruins" on 
the wasted plains. Rome, during the Gothic wars, was for a 
time without a Hving soul within its walls. In Britain a consid- 
erable part of the Roman towns seem to have been virtually 
wiped out of existence by the Anglo-Saxon invaders. In south- 
ern France, in Italy, and in Spain the cities on the whole suf- 
fered less; yet in none of the countries where they had sprung 
up and flourished under the shelter of the Roman rule did they 
wholly escape hurt and harm. 

But it was not alone the violence of the destroyers of the 
Empire that brought so many cities to ruin. What chiefly caused 
their depopulation and decay was the preference of the barba- 
rians for the open country to the city. As we have already 
learned, they had no liking for life within city walls. Hence it 
was inevitable that under the influence of the invasion, city life, 
speaking generally, should give place to country life. Up to the 
eleventh century the population of Europe was essentially a rural 
population like that of Russia to-day. 

164. Rapid Development of the Cities in the Tenth and 
Eleventh Centuries. But just as soon as the invaders had settled 
down and civilization had begun to revive, the old Roman towns 
began gradually to assume somewhat of their former importance, 
and new ones to spring up in those provinces where they had been 
swept away and in the countries outside of the limits of the 
ancient Empire. 

151 



152 



GROWTH OF THE TOWNS 



[§165 



During the tenth century western Europe, it will be recalled, 
was terribly troubled by the Northmen, the Hungarians, and the 
Saracens (sect. 92). There being no strong central government, 
the cities, thrown upon their own resources for defense, some- 
times with and sometimes without royal or imperial sanction, 
armed their militia, perfected their municipal organization, and 
above all else surrounded themselves with walls. Strong walls were 
the only sure protection in those evil times. Thus Europe became 




m ^"^iM 




Fig. 27. The Amphitheater at Arles in Medieval Times 
(From Smith, T/ie Troitbadoiirs at Ho)ue) 

The amphitheater was made a fortress, packed with houses, in the eighth century, on 
account of Saracen incursions. — Justin H. Smith 

thickset with strong-walled cities, the counterpart of the castles 
of the feudal lords, which were the defense of the countryside. 

165. The Towns enter the Feudal System; their Revolt. 
When feudalism took possession of Europe the cities became a 
part of the system. They became vassals and suzerains. As 
vassals they were of course subjected to all the incidents of 
feudal ownership.^ They owed allegiance to their suzerain, were 

1 At first each householder in a town was a tenant of the lord of the fief and was 
individually liable to him for rents or military service ; but later many of the towns as 
towns, that is, as corporate bodies, became responsible for the rents and services due 
the lord. It was not until the towns came to act in their corporate capacity that they 
became an important factor in the political system. 



§165] 



REVOLT OF THE TOWNS 



153 



he baron, prince, prelate, king, or emperor, and must pay him 
feudal tribute and aid him in his war enterprises. 

As the cities, through their manufactures and trade, were the 
most wealthy members of the feudal system, the lords naturally 
looked to them for money when in need. Their demands and 
exactions at last became unendurable, and a long struggle broke 
out between them and the burghers, which resulted in what is 
known as the en- 
franchisement of the 
towns. 

It was in the course 
of the eleventh cen- 
tury that this revolt 
of the cities against 
the feudal lords be- 
came general. The 
burghers by this 
time had made their 
walls strong and had 
learned to fight, — 
if indeed they had 
ever forgotten that 
art. They became 
bold enough to defy 
their lord, — to shut 
their gates in the face of his taxgatherer and even in the face of 
the lord himself, be he king or emperor, when he came to parley 
with them. The contest lasted two centuries and more. 

The advantage in the end rested with the burghers. In process 
of time the greater number of the towns of the countries of west- 
ern Europe either bought with money or wrested by force of 
arms charters from their lords or suzerains. Many lords, however, 
of their own free will gave charters to the towns within their fiefs, 
granting them various exemptions and privileges, for the reason 
that this fostered their growth and prosperity and made them 
more profitable vassals and tenants. 




P'iG. 28. A Count and his Wife grantinc; a 

Charter to a City. (From a fifteenth-century 

manuscript ; after LacroLv) 



154 GROWTH OF THE TOWNS [§166 

As the cities, under the protection of their charters, grew in 
wealth and population, many of them in some countries became at 
last strong enough to cast off all actual dependence upon lord 
or king, became in effect independent states, — little common- 
wealths. Especially was this true in the case of the Italian cities 
and in a less marked degree in the case of some of the Ger- 
man towns. Respecting the fortunes of the cities in these two 
countries we shall speak with some detail in later sections. 

166. The Industrial Life of the Towns; the Gilds. The 
towns were the workshops of the later Middle Ages. The most 
noteworthy characteristics of their industrial life are connected 
with certain corporations or fraternities known as gilds. There 
were two chief classes of these, the gild merchant and the craft 
gilds. The gild merchant appears in the towns as soon as their 
commercial life becomes in any way active, that is to say, about 
the eleventh century. The members of the fraternity, speaking 
generally, were the chief landowners and traders of the place, and 
in many towns the city government was more or less completely 
in their hands. 

Later, as trade developed, the craftsmen began to form sepa- 
rate fellowships on the model of the earlier society. We hear 
of unions of the shoemakers, the bakers, the weavers, the spin- 
ners, the dyers, the millers, and so on to the end. In some cities 
there were upwards of fifty of these associations. 

No sooner had these plebeian societies grown strong than, in 
many of the Continental cities, they entered into a bitter struggle 
with the patrician gild merchant for a share in the municipal 
government or for participation in its trade monopoly. This 
conflict, in some of its features, reminds us of that between 
patrician and plebeian in ancient Rome. It lasted for two cen- 
turies and more, — the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries mark 
the height of the struggle on the Continent, — and during all this 
time filled the towns with strenuous confusion. The outcome, 
speaking in general terms, was the triumph of the craftsmen. 

The internal history of the towns during the fourteenth and 
fifteenth centuries is very largely the story of the gilds in their 



§167] 



THE HANSEATIC LEAGUE 



155 




manifold activities. This story, however, it is impossible to give 
even in outline in our short space. We must content ourselves 
with having merely indicated the place of these interesting 
fraternities in the life of the mediaeval towns. 

167. The Hanseatic League. When, in the eleventh and 
twelfth centuries, the towns of northern Europe began to extend 
their commercial connec- 
tions, the greatest draw- 
back to their trade was 
the insecurity and dis- 
order that everywhere 
prevailed. The trader 
who intrusted his goods 
designed for the Italian 
market to the overland 
routes was in danger of 
losing them at the hands 
of the robber nobles, who 
watched all the lines of 
travel and either robbed 
the merchant outright or 
levied an iniquitous toll 
upon his goods. Nor was 
the way by sea beset with 
less peril. Piratical crafts 
scoured the waters and 

made booty of any luckless merchantman they might overpower 
or by treacherous beacons lure to wreck upon the dangerous shores. 

Finally, about the middle of the thirteenth century, some of 
the German cities, among which Liibeck and Hamburg were 
prominent, began to form temporary alliances for protecting their 
merchants against pirates and robbers. These transient leagues 
finally led to the formation of the celebrated Hanseatic^ League, 
whose firm organization as a political power dates from near the 
middle of the fourteenth century. The confederation came to 

1 From the old German lumsa, a " confederation " or " union." 



Fig. 29. Relief over the door of the 

Public Scales, Nuremberg. (By Adam 

Kraft, the greatest German sculptor in 

stone of the Renaissance period) 

The Hanseatic League paid great attention to 

correctness of measure, weight, and quality. — 

Henderson 



156 



GROWTH OF THE TOWNS 



[§ 168 



embrace eighty or more — the number is uncertain-^ of the prin- 
cipal towns of North Germany. The league organized armies, 
equipped navies, and exercised all the powers of sovereignty. It 
was ''mediaeval Germany on the sea." 

In order to facilitate the trading operations of its members, the 
league maintained in different foreign cities factories, magazines, 
inns, and chapels. These stations were somewhat like the settlements 
established to-day by Europeans in the countries of the Far East. 



Bergen 3? j^ 




The Hansa Towns and their Chief Foreign Settlements 



The" most noted centers of the foreign trade of the confederation 
were the cities of Bruges, London, Bergen, Wisby, and Novgorod. 
The league thus became a vast monopoly, which endeavored to 
control in the interests of its own members the entire commerce 
of northern Europe. 

168. Causes of the Dissolution of the League. Numerous 
causes concurred to undermine the prosperity of the Hansa towns 
and to bring about the dissolution of the league. Most promi- 
nent among these was the development of the manufactures and 
trade of the peoples whom the German merchants had for a time 
commercially subjected. The native traders now naturally became 



§169] GROWTH OF THE ITALIAN CITIES 157 

jealous of these foreigners, and the sovereigns of the land in 
which they had been allowed to establish settlements found it to 
their interest to annul the privileges formerly granted them and 
to encourage home industry and trade. 

Another agency of disruption was the great maritime dis- 
coveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, which trans- 
ferred the centers of commercial activity as well from the Baltic 
as from the Mediterranean ports to the harbors on the Atlantic 
seaboard. Finally, the Reformation and the accompanying reli- 
gious wars in Germany, which brought many of the Hansa towns 
to utter ruin, completed the dissolution of the league. 

169. Causes of the Early Growth of the Italian Cities. But 
it was in Italy that the mediaeval cities acquired the greatest 
power and influence. Several things conspired to promote their 
early and rapid development, but a main cause of their prosperity 
was their trade with the East and the enormous impulse given to 
this commerce by the Crusades. 

With wealth came power, and all the chief Italian cities became 
distinct, self-governing states, with just a nominal dependence 
upon Pope or Emperor. Towards the close of the thirteenth 
century northern and central Italy was divided among about 
two hundred contentious little city-republics. Italy had become 
another Greece. 

170. The Rise of Despots. The constant wars of the Italian 
cities with each other and the incessant strife of parties within 
each city led to the same issue as that to which tended the end- 
less contentions and divisions of the Greek cities in ancient times. 
Their democratic institutions were overthrown, and by the end 
of the thirteenth century a large part of the city-republics of 
northern and central Italy had fallen into the hands of domestic 
tyrants, many of whom by their crimes rendered themselves as 
odious as the worst of the tyrants who usurped supreme power in 
the cities of ancient Hellas. 

We shall now relate some circumstances, for the most part of 
a commercial or social character, which concern some of the most 
renowned of the Italian city-states. 



158 



GROWTH OF THE TOWNS 



[§ 171 







171. Venice. Venice, the most famous of the Italian cities, 
had its beginnings in the fifth century in the rude huts of some 
refugees who fled out into the marshes of the Adriatic to escape 
the fury of the Huns of Attila. Here, secure from the pursuit of 
the barbarians, who were unprovided with boats, they gradually 
built up, on some low islets, a number of little villages, which 
finally, towards the close of the seventh century, coalesced to form 
a single city, at whose head was placed a ruler bearing the title 

of Duke, or Doge, a 
name destined to acquire 
a wide renown. 

Conquests and nego- 
tiations gradually ex- 
tended century after 
century the possessions 
of the island republic, 
until she finally came to 
control the coast and 
waters of the eastern 
Mediterranean in much 
the same way that 
Carthage had mastery of 
the western Mediter- 
ranean at the time of the 
First Punic War. Even 
before the Crusades her trade with the East was very extensive, 
and by those expeditions was expanded into enormous dimensions. 
The sea between Italy and the ports of Egypt and Syria was 
whitened with the sails of her transports and war galleys. It will 
be recalled that she took part in the Fourth Crusade, which 
resulted in the capture of Constantinople by the Latin Christians 
(sect. 133). As her share of the divided lands of the Eastern 
Empire she received the Peloponnesus, most of the Greek islands, 
and the shore lands of the Hellespont, — a goodly empire of the sea. 
Venice was at the height of her power during the thirteenth, 
fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. Her supremacy on the 



ta«i-^I^S5!f^'' 



Fig. 30. State Barge of Venice used 

IN THE Ceremony of "Wedding the 

Adriatic " (From a model preserved in the 

Venetian Arsenal ; after Lacroix) 

She was a maiden city briglit and free ; 
No guile seduced, no force could violate ; 
And, when she took unto herself a mate. 
She must espouse the everlasting sea. 

Wordsworth 



§171] 



"WEDDING THE ADRIATIC" 



159 



Mediterranean was celebrated each year by the unique ceremony 
of "Wedding the Adriatic" by the dropping of a ring into the sea.- 
The origin of this custom was as follows : In the year 11 77 Pope 
Alexander III, out of gratitude to the Venetians for services ren- 
dered him in his quarrel with the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, 
gave a ring to the Doge with these words: "Take this as a token 
of dominion over the sea, and wed her every year, you and your 
successors forever, in order that all may know that the sea belongs 
to Venice and is 
subject to her as a 
bride is subject to 
her husband." This 
annual celebration 
of the ceremony was 
one of the most 
brilliant spectacles 
of the Middle Ages. 

The sea-power and 
commercial ascend- 
ancy of Venice was 
embodied in her 
famous marine Ar- 
senal. This consisted 
of a series of wharves, 
dockyards, and vast magazines filled with marine war-engines and 
military stores of every kind. In the city's palmiest day sixteen 
thousand shipbuilders, workmen, and guards were employed here. 
The Arsenal was one of the sights of Europe and is still an object 
of interest to the curious traveler. Dante introduced in his 
Inferno'^ a celebrated description of the place, doubtless from 
personal knowledge of it. 

The decline of Venice dates from the fifteenth century. The 
conquests of the Ottoman Turks during this century deprived her 
of much of the territory she held east of the Adriatic, and finally 
the discovery of the New World by Columbus and of an unbroken 

1 Canto xxi, 7-19. 




Fig. 31. A Canal in Venice 
(From a photograph) 



i6o GROWTH OF THE TOWNS [§172 

water route to India by Vasco da Gama gave a deathblow to her 
commerce. From this time on the trade with the East was to be 
conducted from the Atlantic ports instead of from those in the 
Mediterranean. 

172. Genoa. Genoa, on the old Ligurian coast, was after 
Venice the most powerful of the Italian maritime cities. She early 
crushed her near competitor Pisa,^ and then entered into a fierce 
competition with Venice for the control of the trade of the Orient. 

The period of Genoa's greatest prosperity dates from the re- 
capture of Constantinople from the Latins by the Greeks in 1261. 
Through jealousj'^ of the Venetians the Genoese assisted the 
Greeks in the recovery of the city and in return were given 
various commercial privileges in places along the Bosphorus. Very 
soon they established stations upon the shores of the Euxine and 
began to carry on a lucrative trade with eastern Asia by way 
of the Black Sea and the Caspian. 

The jealousy with which the Venetians regarded the prosperity 
of the Genoese led to oft-renewed war between the two rival 
republics. For nearly two centuries their fleets contended, as did 
the navies of Rome and Carthage, for the supremacy of the sea. 

The final blow to Genoa's prosperity was given by the irruption 
into Europe of the Mongols and the Ottoman Turks and the 
capture of Constantinople by the latter in 1453. The Genoese 
traders were now driven from the Black Sea, and their traffic with 
eastern Asia was completely broken up; for the Venetians had 
control of the ports of Egypt and Syria and the southern routes to 
India and the countries beyond, — that is, the routes by way of 
the Euphrates and the Red Sea. 

173. Florence. Florence, "the most illustrious and fortunate 
of Italian republics," although, from her inland location upon the 
Arno, shut out from engaging in those naval enterprises that con- 
ferred wealth and importance upon the coast cities of Venice, 

1 Pisa is located a little to the south of Genoa, on the same co^st. The first battle 
between the navies of the two republics was fought in 1070. Thenceforward for two 
centuries the rival cities were engaged in an almost continuous war, which finall)' resulted 
in the complete destruction of the power of Pisa. 





















o 



fc s 







§174] CONTRIBUTIONS OF TOWNS TO CULTURE i6i 

Genoa, and Pisa, became, notwithstanding, through the skill, 
industry, enterprise, and genius of her citizens, the great manu- 
facturing, financial, literary, and art center of the later mediae- 
val centuries. The list of her illustrious citizens, of her poets, 
statesmen, historians, architects, sculptors, and painters is more 
extended than that of any other city of mediaeval times; and 
indeed, as respects the number of her great men, Florence is per- 
haps unrivaled by any city of the ancient or modern world save 
Athens. In her long roll of fame we find the names of Dante, 
Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Michael Angelo, Leonardo da 
Vinci, Galileo, Amerigo Vespucci, and the Medici. 

About the beginning of the fifteenth century Florence fell into 
the hands of the celebrated Medici,^ a Florentine family that had 
grown rich and powerful through mercantile enterprises. These 
usurpers of liberty were fortunately enlightened despots and made 
their rule generally acceptable to the Florentines through a mu- 
nificent patronage extended to artists and scholars, an unstinted 
liberality in the prosecution of public works, and the glory they 
shed upon Florence by the maintenance of a brilliant court. 

174. Services to Civilization of the Mediaeval Towns. 
Modern civilization inherited much from each of the three great 
centers of mediaeval life,— the monastery, the castle, and the 
town. We have noticed what came out of cloister and of baronial 
hall, what the monk and what the baron contributed to civili- 
zation.- We must now see what came out of the town, what con- 
tribution the burgher made to European life and culture. 

In the first place, the mediaeval cities bequeathed to modern 
times certain valuable economic ideals and principles. It was in 
the heart of these communities, as within the early Benedictine 
monasteries, that labor, almost for the first time in history, if we 
except the teachings and practices of the Hebrews, was emanci- 
pated and the stigma put upon it by slavery and serfdom 

1 The two most distinguished names of the house are those of Cosimo de' Medici 
(1389-1464), who was called the " Friend of the People and the Father of his Country," 
and Lorenzo, his grandson (1448-1492), who had bestowed upon him the title of 
" The Magnificent." 

2 See sects. 32, 97. 



l62 



GROWTH OF THE TOWNS 



[§174 




removed/ In the cities of ancient Greece and Italy, speaking 
generally, trading, save in a large way, and all manual employ- 
ments were given over into servile hands; a citizen engaging in 

business was in some 
cases punished by being 
deprived of his citi- 
zenship, since he was 
regarded as having dis- 
honored himself. In 
the mediaeval towns, on 
the contrary, it was a 
very general rule that 
only the members of 
the merchant and craft 
gilds could have lot 
and part in the munici- 
pal government. This 
meant that here labor 
had ceased to be servile 
and was coming to be 
looked upon, at least 
by the laborers them- 
selves, as honorable. 
This new feeling re- 
FiG. 32. The Hotel de Ville, or Town garding labor the 
Hall, of Louvain. (After Liibke) towns transmitted to 

This magnificent Gothic edifice dates from the fifteenth the Modern Age. 1 hlS 

century. Fortunately it escaped unharmed when a great wag one of the mOSt 

part of the city was laid in ruins by the Germans at the . i , f 

opening of the war of I9M prCClOUS elements of 

the great bequest. 
In the second place, the towns were the cradle of modern com- 
merce; that is, of trade on a large scale between widely separated 
cities and lands. It was through the activity and enterprise of 






— ^ ^- 



iM^f^. 




1 Serfdom was early extinguished in the towns, which became one of the most 
powerful agencies, both through direct action and indirect influence, in the abolition of 
rural serfdom. 



§174j 



MEDIEVAL CATHEDRALS 



163 



the mediaeval merchant and trader that was laid the basis of that 
vast system of international exchange and traffic which forms so 
characteristic a feature of modern European civilization. 

In the third place, the mediaeval cities, along with the monas- 
teries, were the foster home of architecture, sculpture, and paint- 
ing. These things, as has been well said, are ''the beautiful 











Fig. 33. The Cologne Cathedral. (From a photograph) 

This edifice was begun in the eleventh century, but was not finished until our own day 
(1880). It is one of the most imposing monuments of Gothic architecture in the world 

flowers of free city life." The old picturesque high-gabled houses, 
the sculptured gild halls, the artistic gateways, the superb palaces, 
and the imposing cathedrals found in so many of the cities of 
Europe to-day bear witness to the important place which the 
mediaeval towns hold in the history of architecture and art. 
The mediaeval cathedrals, in which the art instinct as well as the 
religious feeling of the IMiddle Ages reached its loftiest expression, 
were, like the Crusades, the outgrowth of a faith and an en- 
thusiasm that animated all classes alike. Many of the structures 



i64 GROWTH OF THE TOWNS [§ 174 

were the result of the united toil of generation after generation. 
The expense was met in various ways. Rich monasteries made 
large contributions; city councils voted constant appropriations; 
kings made grants or exempted from taxation cities and prov- 
inces that would undertake the erection of a church or a 
cathedral; while the bequests of the dying, and the free offer- 
ings of the people, in labor and products, swelled the streams 
of contribution. 

The style of architecture employed from the ninth to the middle 
of the twelfth century in church structure was the Romanesque, 
characterized by the rounded arch and the dome; but towards the 
close of the twelfth century this was commonly superseded by 
the Gothic, distinguished by the pointed arch, buttressed walls, 
broad, beautiful windows, the slender spire, and rich ornamenta- 
tion. The pointed arch seems to have been developed in southern 
France, but the revolution from the round arch to this form doubt- 
less received an impulse from the East, through the medium of 
the Crusades, since the pointed style was employed by the Mos- 
lems in the construction of their mosques as early, certainly, as 
the ninth century. 

In the fourth place, the towns were the birthplace of modern 
political liberty. They became such through giving society . a 
new order at a time when political society was made up of orders. 
In the eleventh and twelfth centuries there were in the state only 
two classes, or orders, which had participation in the government, 
— the nobility and the clergy. The inhabitants of the towns grew 
into a new order destined to a great political future, the so-called 
Third Estate, or Commons} During the course of the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, under circumstances which we shall ex- 
plain in a succeeding chapter, the representatives of the towns 
came to sit along with the nobles and the clergy in the national 



1 In England the men of the rural districts, that is of the counties, formed from 
the first, or almost from the first, a part of this order. In other European countries, 
however, it was not until a later time that the agricultural class came to reinforce the 
new estate. 



"^ 



§ 174] REFERENCES AND TOPICS 165 

diets or parliaments of the different countries/ What this meant 
for the development of modern parliamentary government we shall 
learn later. 

In the fifth place, it was the most typical of the free cities — 
those of Italy — which gave to the world the Renaissance, that 
great essentially intellectual movement which marked the latter 
part of the Middle Ages. The relation of the Italian cities to this 
mental awakening will be made the subject of a section further on. 

Selections from the Sources. Lee, G. C, Source-Book, sect. 56, " Charter 
of the City of London (from Henry I)." Colby, C. W., Selections, p. 70, 
"A Town Charter." Trajtslations and Reprints, vol. ii. No. i, "English Towns 
and Gilds." Robinson, J. H., Readings iii European History, \o\. i, chap, xviii 
(last part). 

References (Modern). Guizot, F. P. G., History of Civilization in Europe, 
lect. vii, "' Rise of the Free Cities." Green, Mrs. J. R., Town Life in the 
Eifteenth Centtiry. ZiMMERN, H., The Ha7tsa Toums. Symonds, J. A., Age of 
the Despots, chaps, iii and iv. Hazlitt, W. C, The Venetian Republic (the 
standard authority in English). Thayer, W. R., A Short History of Venice. 
Goss, C, The Gild l\ferchant. Mrs. Oliphant, Makers of Vcjiicc. In the 
" Mediaeval Towns " series there are separate volumes on Florence, Nuremberg, 
Bruges, etc., which contain chapters of interest. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The gilds in English towns: Cheyney, E. V., 
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social History of England, pp. 59-73- 
2. City life in Germany : Munro, D. C, and Sellery, G. C, Mediaval Civili- 
zation, pp. 358-365. 3. The Hanseatic League: Henderson, E. F., A Short 
History of Germany (1902 ed.), vol. i, pp. 189-202. 

1 In England the towns were first asked to send representatives to Parliament in 
1265 (sect. 191); in France the delegates of the Third Estate sat with the lords and 
clergy for the first time in 1302 (sect. 213); in Aragon and Castile the representatives 
of the cities were admitted to the Cortes in 11 33 and 1162 respectively ; in Germany the 
deputies of the free imperial cities acquired membership in the Diet during the reign of 
Heniy VII (130S-1313). 



CHAPTER XVI 
THE UNIVERSITIES AND THE SCHOOLMEN 

175. Introductory. "History's tru^e object of study," says 
an eminent historian, "is the human mind; it should aspire to 
know what this mind has believed, thought, and felt in the dif- 
ferent ages of the life of .the human race." 

What we have narrated in preceding chapters respecting medi- 
aeval institutions and enterprises will have revealed to the thought- 
ful reader something at least of both the mind and the heart of 
the men of the Middle Ages. Nothing, however, mirrors more 
perfectly the purely intellectual life of those centuries than the 
universities which the age-spirit called into existence. For this 
reason we propose in the present chapter to say something of these 
institutions and of what was taught in them. 

176. The Rise and Early Growth of the Universities. It 
will be recalled that a significant feature of the work of Charle- 
magne was the establishment of schools in connection with the 
cathedrals and monasteries of his realm (sect. 75). From the 
opening of the ninth till well on into the eleventh century the lamp 
of learning was fed in these episcopal and monastic schools, 
although throughout the tenth century the flame burned very 
low. Closely associated with these Church seminaries we find the 
names of many of the most influential men of the earlier mediaeval 
centuries. 

But towards the close of the eleventh and the opening of the 
twelfth centur>' a new intellectual movement, which was destined 
to affect profoundly these schools, began to stir western Christen- 
dom. This mental revival was caused by many agencies, particu- 
larly by the quickening influence of the Graeco-Arabian culture in 
Spain and the Orient, with which the Christian West was just 
now being brought into closer contact through the Crusades. 

166 



§177] GROWTH OF THE UNIVERSITIES 167 

As a consequence of this newly awakened intellectual life there 
arose a demand for more advanced and specialized instruction 
than that given in the cloister schools, and especially for a freer 
and more secular system of education, one that should prepare 
a person for entering upon a professional career as a physician, 
lawyer, or statesman/ 

It was in response to these new demands that the universities 
came into existence. Their early history is very obscure for the 
reason that the most ancient ones, as Laurie says, "grew and were 
not founded." Some of these were mere expansions of cathedral 
or monastery schools; others developed out of lay schools which 
had grown up in commercial towns, especially in the Italian cities, 
and in which the instruction given was almost wholly secular in 
character and practical in aim. 

It was about the end of the twelfth and the opening of the 
thirteenth century when the earliest universities were formally 
recognized by royal and papal charters. Three of the most ancient 
universities were the University of Salerno, noted for its teachers 
in medicine; the University of Bologna, frequented for its instruc- 
tion in law; and the University of Paris, revered for the authority 
of its doctors in theology. Bologna and Paris served as models 
in organization and government for the most of the later univer- 
sities. The University of Paris gave constitution and rules to so 
many as to earn the designation of "the Mother of Universities 
and the Sinai of the Middle Ages." 

177. University Organization: the "Nations," or Gilds. 
Many features of the mediaeval university can be understood only 
in the light of the fact that in the mediaeval town the alien was 
almost as wholly without rights, both political and civil, as was 
the alien in a city of ancient Greece, and that in case of most 
of the universities not only the students but the masters as well 

1 The number of faculties in the mediasval university was not fixed. A usual number 
was four, — the Faculty of Theology, the Faculty of Medicine, the Faculty of Law, 
and the Faculty of Arts (or Philosophy). The course in arts embraced what is to-day 
covered by the courses in letters and science, and served as a preparation for entrance 
upon one of the three specialized professional courses, though most of the students 
never went beyond it. 



1 68 UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLMEN [§ 178 

were almost all noncitizens of the towns in which they gathered. 
Consequently, for the sake of comradeship, for mutual assistance 
and "the avenging of injuries," the students, either alone or in 
connection with their teachers, organized themselves, according 
to the countries whence they came, into associations or gilds, 
which came to be known as "Nations." At Paris there were 
four of these groups, at Bologna thirty-six. 

These gilds exercised or enjoyed special rights and privileges. 
These very generally included exemption from taxation and from 
military service and freedom from the jurisdiction of the ordinary 
courts. The early universities thus became in a large measure 
self-governed and self-judged communities, in a word, "literary 
republics," holding some such relation to the civil authorities of the 
cities in which they were situated as many of these cities them- 
selves, in the age of independent city life, held to the state. 

178. Students and Student Life. The number of students in 
attendance at the mediaeval universities was large. Contempo- 
raries tell of crowds of fifteen, twenty, and even thirty thousand 
at the most popular institutions. These numbers have been called 
in question, and it will be safe to consider them, like other medi- 
aeval figures, merely as "metaphors for immensity." But that 
the attendance was numerous is certain, for in those times all 
who were eager to acquire knowledge — and the intellectual fer- 
ment was general — must needs seek some seat of learning, since 
the scarcity and great cost of manuscript books put home study 
out of the question. Then, again, many of the pupils attending 
the nonprofessional courses were mere boys of twelve or there- 
abouts, — the high-school pupils of to-day; while, on the other 
hand, the student body embraced many mature men, among 
whom were to be counted canons, deans, archdeacons, and other 
dignitaries. 

Student life in the earlier university period, before the dormi- 
tory and college system was introduced, was unregulated and 
shamefully disorderly. The age was rough and lawless, and the 
student class were no better than their age; indeed, in some re- 
spects they seem to have been worse. For the student body 



§ 179] 



STUDENTS AND STUDENT LIFE 



169 



included many rich young profligates, who found the universities 
the most agreeable places for idling away their time, as well as 
many wild and reckless characters who were constantly engaging 
in tavern brawls, terrorizing the townsmen at night, even way- 
laying travelers on the public roads and, as an old chronicler 
avers, " committing many other enormities hateful to God." 




Fig. 34. University Audience in the Fifteenth Century 
(From Geiger's Renaissance unci Hum anisnius) 



Between the students composing the different "Nations" there 
existed much race prejudice and animosity, which sometimes 
broke out in unseemly riots in the lecture room. The most serious 
feuds, however, arose between the students and the townsmen. 
"Town and gown" disagreements and fights were common and 
not unfrequently resulted in the migration to another city of the 
whole, or practically the whole, body of students and masters, 

179. Branches of Study and Methods of Instruction. The 
advanced studies given greatest prominence in the universities 



170 UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLMEN [§179 

were the three professional branches of theology, medicine, and 
law. The natural sciences can hardly be said to have existed, 
although in alchemy lay hidden the germ of chemistry and in 
astrology that of astronomy. The Ptolemaic theory, which made 
the earth the stationary center of the revolving celestial spheres, 
gave color and form to all conceptions of the structure of the 
universe. 

The method of instruction, which was given in the Latin 
language, was the same in all the university departments. It was 
a servile study of texts, which were regarded with a veneration 
bordering on superstition and were minutely analyzed and com- 
mented upon. Thus in theology it was a study of the Bible and 
particularly of the writings of the Church Fathers and doctors; 
in medicine, an explanation of the works of Hippocrates and 
Galen with their Arabian commentators; in natural science, a 
study of the physics of Aristotle; in civil law, a commentary on 
the works of the Corpus Juris of Justinian, and in canon law, on 
the decisions and edicts of popes and councils. Not even in the 
physical sciences was there any serious appeal to experience, to 
observation, to experiment. In anatomy discussions took the place 
of dissections.' Books were considered better authority -than 
nature herself. "Aristotle," says Ueberweg, "was regarded as the 
founders of religions are wont to be considered." One venturing 
to criticize this "Master of those who know" was looked upon 
as presumptuous and irreverent. 

This mode of study resulted in part from an imitation of 
the method followed in theology, which was perforce a study of 
texts held as authoritative or infallible; and in part from the lack 
of books, which made dictation by the teacher and note taking 
and memorizing by the student the only practicable mode of 
carrying on the work of the lecture room. 

The ordinary classes met in private rooms or hired apartments. 
Mass meetings of the "Nations" and other large assemblages 
were held in some convenient cathedral or convent church that was 

1 At Bologna, where anatomical study was most advanced, each student witnessed 
only one dissection during the year. 



§180] PETER ABELARD 171 

borrowed for the occasion. The university itself had at first 
neither dormitories nor halls.^ The modern method of creating 
a university was reversed. As Dr. Jessopp says, " the men came 
first; the bricks and mortar followed long after." 

180. Scholasticism; the Province of the Schoolmen. Spring- 
ing up within the early ecclesiastical schools and developed within 
the later universities, there came into existence a method of 
philosophizing which, from the place of its origin, was called Scho- 
lasticism, while its representatives were called Schoolmen, or 
Scholastics. The chief task of the Schoolmen was the reducing 
of Christian doctrines to scientific form, the harmonizing of reve- 
lation and reason. Viewed in this light, it was not altogether un- 
like that theological philosophy of the present day whose aim is 
to harmonize the Bible with the facts of modern science. 

181. Peter Abelard. The most eminent of the early School- 
men was Peter Abelard (1079-1142). Such a teacher the world 
probably had not produced since Socrates enchained the youth 
of Athens. At Paris over five thousand pupils are said to have 
thronged his lecture room. Driven by the shame of a public 
scandal to seek retirement, he hid himself first in a monastery 
and later in a solitude near the city of Troyes. But his admirers 
followed him into the wilds in such multitudes that a veritable 
university sprang up around him in his desert retreat. 

Abelard carried to an extreme the tendency of the Schoolmen 
to rationalize everything. ^'A doctrine is believed," he taught, 
"not because God has said it, but because we are convinced by 
reason that it is so." He declared doubt to be the starting point 
in the quest of knowledge, and, apparently with the object of 
producing this desirable state of mind in his disciples, wrote a 
book entitled Sic et Non ("So and Not So"), which was a col- 
lection of mutually contradictory opinions of the Church Fathers 
on every conceivable theological question. 

1 It was this poverty of the university which rendered so easy those migrations 
or secessions of dissatisfied students and masters of which we hear so frequently. 
Nothing prevented them, if they felt themselves wronged by the local authorities, 
from fleeing from one city to another. Several of the younger universities originated 
in such movements. 



172 UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLMEN [§ 182 

The Church conservatives became frightened. Bernard of 
Clairvaux, preacher of the Second Crusade, entered the lists 
against the presumptuous champion of the human reason, Ber- 
nard's principle was that man acquires a knowledge of divine 
things by way of the heart and not by way of the intellect. " God 
is known," he finely said, "in proportion as he is loved." He 
charged Abelard with pride of intellect: "There is nothing in 
heaven or on earth," he said, "that he does not claim to know." 
He complained that no place was left for faith ; the human reason 
usurped everything. 

The temper of the times was against Abelard. Certain of his 
opinions were condemned by two Church councils, and he was 
forced to burn part of his writings. This was one of the most 
noteworthy collisions between ecclesiastical authority and freedom 
of thought during the Middle Ages. 

Abelard's brilliant reputation as a philosopher was tarnished 
by grave faults of character. Intrusted with the education of a 
fascinating and mentally gifted maiden, Helo'ise by name, Abelard 
betrayed the confidence reposed in him. A secret marriage bound 
in a tragic fate the lives of teacher and pupil. The "tale 
of Abelard and Heloise" forms one of the most romantic yet 
saddest traditions of the twelfth centur>'. 

182. Scholasticism in the Thirteenth Century; Albert the 
Great and Thomas Aquinas. The thirteenth century witnessed 
a fresh development of Scholasticism. The impulse to this re- 
newed intellectual activity came to the Christian West, like many 
similar incitements, from ancient Greece. It came at this time 
through various channels, but mainly through the Arabian schools 
in Spain. Before the end of the first quarter of the thirteenth 
century all the works of Aristotle were for the first time brought 
to the knowledge of the Schoolmen. Before this it was chiefly his 
logic which was known to them ; but now all his other works were 
translated into Latin, at first from Arabic or Hebrew versions, 
and then later directly from the Greek text. 

It would be difficult to exaggerate the stimulating influence of 
these fresh philosophical and scientific acquisitions upon the 



§183] SCIENTIFIC SIDE OF SCHOLASTICISM 173 

Christian thinkers of the West. The great age of Scholasticism 
now opened. The universities of Paris and Oxford were the chief 
centers of the new movement; the Mendicant Orders furnished 
its most illustrious representatives. 

From the Dominican Order came Albertus Magnus, or ''Albert 
the Great" (i 193-1280), who was called ''the second Aristotle," 
and Thomas Aquinas (1225 or 1227-12 74), known as "the Angelic 
Doctor." As philosophers these Schoolmen stand to each other 
in some such relation as did Plato and Aristotle, nor are their 
names unworthy of being linked with the names of those great 
thinkers of ancient Greece. The reputation of Aquinas as the 
greatest Scholastic and theologian of the IVIiddle Ages rests largely 
upon his prodigious work entitled Siimma Theologim, or " Sum of 
Theology." In its ponderous folios all revealed truth, all the 
doctrines of the Church, and all related knowledge are sys- 
tematically arranged and welded by logic into an all-comprehending 
and absolute science.^ The work is regarded as the standard 
of orthodoxy in the Roman Catholic Church. 

183. The Scientific Side of Scholasticism; Roger Bacon. 
The typical Schoolman was a logician, and speculative subjects 
connected with theology were his supreme interest; yet there were 
some Schoolmen who devoted themselves largely to physical 
science, and sought to gain a knowledge of nature not alone 
through books but by direct personal observation and study of 
nature herself. The impulse to this study of the natural sciences 
was communicated to Christian scholars mainly through their 
contact with Greek and Arabian learning. 

The most noteworthy representative of the scientific activity of 
the Scholastic age was the English Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon 
(d. about 1294), called "the Wonderful Doctor," on account of 
his marvelous knowledge of mechanics, optics, chemistry, and 

1 This was not the first attempt of the kind. In the twelfth century Peter of Lom- 
bard (d. 1 164) wrote his famous Four Books of Sentences, which earned for him the title 
of "the Master of Sentences." This work, which served in some sort as a basis for the 
Swnma by Aquinas, consisted mainly of a collection of short quotations from the writings 
of the Church Fathers and doctors. It was one of the most popular textbooks ever written. 
It held its place in the schools as a manual of theology for more than three hundred years. 



174 UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLMEN [§184 

other sciences. He understood the composition of gunpowder, or 
a similar explosive, and seemingly the nature of steam; for in one 
of his works he says that ''wagons and ships could be built which 
would propel themselves with the swiftness of an arrow, without 
horses and without sails." His contemporaries believed him to 
be in league with the devil. He certainly was in league with the 
Arabian scholars, whose works he studied. He suffered persecu- 
tion and was imprisoned for fourteen years. 

Roger Bacon's greatest bequest to posterity was a book called 
Opus Majus, in which is anticipated in a wonderful way those 
principles of modern inductive science laid down by Francis 
Bacon in the seventeenth century. "The advance of sound his- 
torical judgment," says Andrew D. White, "seems likely to bring 
the fame of the two who bear the name of Bacon nearly to 
equality."^ It is with justice that the earlier Bacon has been 
called " the pioneer of modern science." 

184. The Last of the Schoolmen. The fourteenth and fif- 
teenth centuries witnessed the decline of Scholasticism. Scholas- 
tic debate in the hands of unworthy successors of the great 
philosophers of the thirteenth century fell away for the most 
part into barren disputations over idle and impossible questions. 
The representatives of this degenerate Scholasticism became 
objects of the unmeasured scorn and ridicule of the men of the 
New Learning brought in by that revival of classical culture 
which marked the later mediaeval age. 

185. The Services of the Schoolmen to Intellectual Prog- 
ress. The Schoolmen fill a large place in the history of the in- 
tellectual development of the race. They rendered in this relation 
two distinct and important services. 

In the first place, by their ceaseless debates and argumenta- 
tion they stimulated to activity the mediaeval intellect and dis- 
ciplined it in the processes of exact reasoning. They made the 
universities of the time real mental gymnasia in which the 
European mind was trained and prepared for its later and, happily, 
more fruitful work. 

1 A History of the Way/are of Science with Theology, vol. i, p. 386. 



§185] SERVICES OF THE SCHOOLMEN 175 

In the second place, the Schoolmen rendered a great serv- 
ice to the cause of intellectual freedom. This assertion at first 
blush may appear strange, when one recalls that the submis- 
sion of reason to Church authority was one of the fundamental 
maxims of the orthodox Schoolmen. But the place they gave 
the human reason and the constant appeal they made to it was 
preparing the way for the full and plain assertion of the prin- 
ciple of freedom of thought. " Scholasticism as a whole," says 
Professor Seth, "may be justly regarded as the history of the 
growth and gradual emancipation of reason which was completed 
in the movements of the Renaissance and the Reformation." 

Selections from the Sources. Translations and Reprints, vol. ii, No. 3, 
" The Mediaeval Student." Henderson, E. F., Select Historical Documents, 
pp. 262-266, " The Foundation of the University of Heidelberg. 

References (Modern). Rashdall, H., The Universities of Europe in the 
Middle Ages. Laurie, S. S., The Rise and Early Constitution of Universities. 
COMPAYR^, G., Abelard, and the Origin and Early Histoiy of Universities. 
Jessopp, a., The Coming of the Friars, chap, vi, " The Building up of a Univer- 
sity." Emerton, E., MedicEval Europe, chap. xiii. Gallienne, Richard Le, 
Old Love Stories Retold, "Abelard and Heloise." 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The "Nations" at the universities: Com- 
payre, G., Abelard, pp. 96-107. 2. Student life : Munro, D. C., and Sellery, G. C., 
MedicEval Civilization, pp. 348-357 ; Compayre, G., Abelard, pp. 263-279. 
3. The teachers : Compayre, G., Abelard, pp. 279-286. 



CHAPTER XVII 

GROWTH OF THE NATIONS : FORMATION OF NATIONAL 
GOVERNMENTS AND LITERATURES 

186. Introductory. The most important political movement 
that marked the latter part of the Middle Ages was the fusion, 
in several of the countries of Europe, of the petty feudal prin- 
cipalities and half-independent cities and communes into great 
nations with strong centralized governments. This movement was 
accompanied by, or rather consisted in, the decline of feudalism 
as a jvernmental system, the loss by the cities of their freedom, 
and the growth of the power of the kings. 

Many things contributed to this consolidation of peoples and 
governments, different circumstances favoring the movement in 
the different countries. In some countries, however, conditions 
were opposed to the centralizing tendency, and in these the 
Modern Age was reached without nationality having been found. 
But in England, in France, and in Spain circumstances all seemed 
to tend towards unity, and by the close of the fifteenth century 
there were established in these countries strong despotic mon- 
archies. Yet even among those peoples where national govern- 
ments did not appear, some progress was made towards unity 
through the formation of national languages and literatures, and 
the development of common feelings and aspirations, so that 
these peoples were manifestly only awaiting the opportunities of 
a happier period for the maturing of their national life. 

This rise of monarchy and decline of feudalism, this substitu- 
tion of strong centralized governments in place of the feeble, 
irregular, and conflicting rule of the feudal nobles or of other local 
authorities, was a very great gain to the cause of law and good 
order. It paved the way for modern progress and civilization. 

176 



§187] GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 177 

In these changes the political liberties of all classes, of the 
cities as well as of the nobility, were, it is true, subverted. But 
though Liberty was lost, Nationality was found. And the people 
may be trusted to win back freedom, as we shall see. Those 
sturdy burghers — the merchants, artisans, lawyers of the cities 
— who, in the eleventh century, showed 'themselves stronger 
than lords, will in time, with the help of the yeomanry, prove 
themselves stronger than k'mgs. Europe shall be not only orderly 
but free. Out of despotic monarchy will rise constitutional, 
representative government. 

I. ENGLAND 

187. General Statement. In earlier chapters we told of the 
origin of the English people and traced their growth under Saxon, 
Danish, and Norman rulers. In the present sections we shall tV'l 
very briefly the story of their fortunes under the Plantagenet^ 
house and its branches, thus carrying on our narrative to the 
accession of the Tudors in 1485, from which event dates the 
beginning of the modern history of England. 

The chief events of the period which we shall notice were the 
martyrdom of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, the 
loss of the English possessions in France, the wresting of Magna 
Carta from King John, the formation of the House of Commons, 
the conquest of Wales, the wars with Scotland, the Hundred 
Years' War with France, and the War of the Roses. 

188. The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket (1172). The most 
impressive event in the reign of the first Plantagenet, Henry II, 

1 The name Plmttagenet came from the peculiar badge, a sprig of broom plant {planie 
de genet), adopted by one of the early members of the house. Following is a table of 
the sovereigns of the family : 

Henry II 1154-1189 house of Lancaster 

Richard I 1189-1199 Henry IV 1399-1413 

John 1199-1216 Henry V 1415-1422 

Henry' III 1216-1272 Henry VI 1422-1461 

Edward I 1272-1307 house of vork 

Edward II 1307-1327 Edward IV 1461-1483 

Edward in 1327-1377 Edward V 1483 

Richard II I377-I399 Richard HI 14S3-1485 



178 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§188 

was a tragedy, — the murder of Thomas Becket, the Archbishop 
of Canterbury. This event possesses great historical interest for 
the reason that it grew out of those contentions between the civil 
and ecclesiastical authorities which, as we have seen, make up 
a large part of mediaeval history. 

The circumstances leading up to the tragedy were these. In 
the early years of Henry's reign Thomas had been a favorite 
courtier, and chancellor of the realm. Thinking that he would 
serve him well as primate, Henry made him Archbishop of Can- 
terbury. As Archbishop, Thomas came into conflict with the 
king on several matters involving the relations of the clergy to 
the civil power, the most important of which was a question re- 
garding the trial of clerks by the secular courts. At this time 
in England the clergy were exempt from the jurisdiction of the 
ordinary courts of justice.^ Since the Church courts could inflict 
no severer penalty than imprisonment, it often happened that 
clerks guilty of the most heinous crimes, even of murder, were pun- 
ished inadequately or even not at all. Moreover, the judges of 
these courts were said to be over-lenient in dealing with accused 
members of their own order. 

Henry resolved that the clergy, like laymen, should be subject 
to the civil courts. To this end he caused to be drawn up the 
so-called Constitutions of Clarendon (1164), which among other 
things provided that persons in orders accused of crime should be 
tried by the king's judges, if these judges deemed the cases to 
be such as should come before them, and that no case should be 
appealed from the courts of the archbishops to the Pope without 
the king's consent. 

Thomas, after some hesitation, swore to observe the Consti- 
tutions, but soon he repented having done so, and sought and 
obtained from the Pope release from his oath. He maintained 

1 Charlemagne had recognized the principle, held from early times by the Church, 
that ecclesiastics should be amenable only to the ecclesiastical tribunals, by freeing the 
whole body of the clergy from the jurisdiction of the temporal courts, in criminal as 
well as in civil cases. Gradually the bishops acquired the right to try all cases relating 
to marriage, trusts, perjury, simony, or concerning widows, orphans, and crusaders, on 
the ground that such cases had to do with religion. 



§189] 



MARTYRDOM OF THOMAS BECKET 



179 




''-p|ii;^/p? 



that the ordinances took away from the Church undoubted rights 
and privileges. His course led to a long and violent quarrel with 
the king. Finally, Henry dropped an impatient expression, which 
four of his courtier knights interpreted as a wish that Thomas 
should be put out of the way. These men sought out the 
archbishop in the cathedral at Can- 
terbury and murdered him on the 
steps of the altar. 

The people ever regarded Thomas 
as a martyr and his tomb in the 
cathedral became a place of pilgrim- 
age. Three hundred years later the 
poet Chaucer made the journey 
thither of a goodly company of pil- 
grims the groundwork of his cele- 
brated Canterbury Tales (sect. 205). 

The attitude of the people after 
the murder of Thomas compelled 
Henry to give up the idea of en- 
forcing the provisions of the Consti- 
tutions of Clarendon. Moreover, he 
vvas constrained to do penance for his 
participation in the crime by submit- 
ting to a flogging by the monks of Canterbury at the martyr's tomb. 

189. Loss of the English Possessions in France (1202-1204). 
The issue of the battle of Hastings, in 1066, made William of 
Normandy king of England. But we must bear in mind that he 
still held his possessions in France as a fief from the French king, 
whose vassal he was. These Continental lands, save for some short 
intervals, remained under the rule of William's Norman successors 
in England. Then, when Henry, Count of Anjou, came to the 
English throne as the first of the Plantagenets, these territories 
were greatly increased by the French possessions of that prince. 
The larger part of Henry's dominions, indeed, was in France, the 
whole of the western half of the country being in his hands; but 
for all of this he of course paid homage to the French king. 



Fig. 35. The Murder of 
Thomas Becket. (From a 
Canterbury seal of the four- 
teenth century 



i8o GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§ 190 

As was inevitable, a feeling of intense jealousy sprang up be- 
tween the two sovereigns. The French king was ever watching for 
some pretext upon which he might deprive his rival of his pos- 
sessions in France. The opportunity came when John, in 1199, 
succeeded Richard the Lion-Hearted as king of England. Twice 
that odious tyrant was summoned by Philip Augustus of France 
to appear before his French peers and clear himself of certain 
charges, one of which was the murder of his nephew Arthur. John 
refused to obey the summons. Philip was finally able, so strong 
was the feeling against John, to dispossess him of all his lands in 
France, save a part of Aquitaine in the south. 

The loss of these lands was a great gain to England. The 
Angevin kings had been pursuing a policy which, had it been 
successful, would have made England a subordinate part of a 
great Continental state. That danger was now averted. In the 
words of Freeman, "England had been a dependency of Anjou; 
Aquitaine was now a dependency of England." 

190. Magna Carta (1215). Magna Carta, the "Great Char- 
ter," held sacred as the safeguard of English liberties, was an 
instrument which the English barons and clergy wrested from 
King John, and in which the ancient rights and privileges of the 
people were clearly defined and guaranteed. 

The circumstances which led up to this memorable transaction, 
narrated in the briefest way possible, were as follows: Among the 
kings of foreign race whom the Norman Conquest brought into 
England there were those who disregarded the customs and insti- 
tutions of the realm and ruled in a very arbitrary and despotic 
manner. King John, as will easily be believed from the revelation 
jQ(),his character already made, surpassed the worst of his prede- 
^Ed^prs in tyranny and wickedness. His course led to an open 
fi^ycj)! of the barons of the realm. The tyrant was forced to bow 
^i($h§TStorm he had raised. He met his barons at Runny- 
.9Kldf^ 3) .flat meadow on the Thames, and there affixed his seal to 
^f .yifiifiument that had been prepared to receive it. 
jucAfggfjg the important articles of the Great Charter were the 
followi^j which we give as showing at once the nature of the 



§ 191] THE GREAT CHARTER i8i 

venerable document and the kind of grievances of which the people 
had occasion to complain: 

Art. 12. "No scutage^ or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom 
except by the common council of our kingdom, except for the ran- 
soming of our body, for the making of our oldest son a knight, and 
for once marrying our oldest daughter, and for these purposes it shall 
be only a reasonable aid;" . . . 

Art. 39. "No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or dispos- 
sessed, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we 
go upon him, nor send upon him, except by the legal judgment of his 
peers or by the law of the land. 

Art. 40. "To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny, or delay 
right or justice." 

The Great Charter did not create new rights and privileges, 
but in its main points simply reasserted and confirmed old usages 
and laws. It was immediately violated by John and afterwards 
was disregarded by many of his successors ; but the people always 
clung to it as the warrant and safeguard of their liberties, and 
again and again forced tyrannical kings to renew and confirm its 
provisions and swear solemnly to observe all its articles. 

Considering the far-reaching consequences that resulted from 
the granting of Magna Carta, — the securing of constitutional 
liberty as an inheritance for the English-speaking race in all parts 
of the world, — it must always be considered the most important 
concession that a freedom-loving people ever wrung from a tyran- 
nical sovereign. 

191. Beginnings of the House of Commons (i265). The 
reign of Henry III (12 16-12 72), John's son and successor, wit- 
nessed the second important step taken in English constitutional 
freedom. This was the formation of the House of Commons, the 
Great Council having up to this time been made up of nobles 
and bishops. It was again the royal misbehavior — so frequently 

1 Scutage was a money payment made in lieu of personal military service. 

2 This article respecting taxation was suffered to fall into abeyance in the reign of 
John's successor, Henr}^ III, and it was not until about one hundred years after the 
granting of Magna Carta that the great principle that the people should be taxed only 
through their representatives in Parliament became fully established. 



1 82 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§ 191 

is it, as Lieber says, that Liberty is indebted to bad kings, though 
to them she owes no thanks — that led to this great change in 
the form of the English national assembly. 

Henry had violated his oath to observe the provisions of the 
Great Charter and had become even more tyrannical than his 
father. In the words of a contemporary, the English were op- 
pressed 'Mike as the people of Israel under Pharaoh." The final 
outcome was an uprising of the barons and the people similar 
to that in the reign of King John. The leader of the revolt was 
Earl Simon, a son of the Simon de Montfort who led the first 
crusade against the Albigenses. It was open war between the 
king and his people. In an engagement known as the battle of 
Lewes (1264), the royal forces were defeated and Henry was 
taken prisoner. 

In order to rally all classes to the support of the cause he 
represented, Earl Simon now issued, in the king's name, writs of 
summons to the barons (save the king's adherents), the bishops, 
and the abbots to meet in Parliament; and at the same time 
sent similar writs to the sheriffs of the shires, directing them "to 
return two knights for the body of their county, with two citizens 
or burghers for every city and borough contained in it." 

Although the knights of the different shires had in several 
instances before this been represented by delegates, so that the 
principle of representation was not now for the first time intro- 
duced into the English constitution, still this was the first time 
when plain untitled citizens, or burghers, had been called to take 
their place with the barons, bishops, and knights, in the great 
council of the nation, to join in deliberations on the affairs of 
the realm.^ 

From this gathering, then, may be dated the birth of the 
House of Commons (1265). Formed as it was of knights and 
burghers, representatives of the common people, it was at first a 

1 At first the burghers could take part only in questions relating to taxation, but 
gradually they acquired the right to share in all matters that might come before Parlia- 
ment. Just thirty years later (in 1295), in the reign of Edward I, there was gathered 
through regular constitutional summons what came to be called the Model Parliament, 
since in its composition it served as a pattern for later parliaments. 



§ 192] CONQUEST OF WALES 183 

weak and timorous body, quite overawed by the great lords, but 
was destined finally to grow into the controlling branch of the 
British Parliament. 

192. Conquest of Wales (1272-1282). For more than seven 
hundred years after the withdrawal of the Romans from Britain, 
the Celtic tribes of Wales maintained among their mountain 
fastnesses an ever-renewed struggle with the successive invaders 
of the island, — with Saxon, Dane, and Norman. They were 
forced to acknowledge the overlordship of some of the Saxon and 
Norman kings; but they were restless vassals and were constantly 
withholding tribute and refusing homage. 

When Edward I (1272-1307) came to the English throne, 
Llewellyn III, who held the overlordship of the Welsh chiefs, 
refused to render homage to the new king. Edward led a strong 
army into the fastnesses of the country and quickly reduced his 
rebel vassal to submission. A few years later, and the Welsh 
patriots were again in arms; but the uprising was soon crushed, 
and Llewellyn was slain (1282). His head, after the barbarous 
manner of the times, was exposed over the gateway of the Tower 
of London.^ The last remnant of Welsh independence was now 
extinguished. Edward made his little son, born during the 
campaign, feudal lord of the Welsh, with the title of Prince of 
Wales; and from that time the title has usually been borne by 
the eldest son of the English sovereign. 

The strong-walled a^id picturesque castle-fortresses — those at 
Conway and Carnarvon are particularly celebrated — which Ed- 
ward built or strengthened to guard the conquered land are, like 
the old watch-towers of the Norman kings in England (sect. 109), 
historical monuments of the greatest interest to the modern 
traveler in Wales. 

For two centuries after the death of Llewellyn the Welsh were 
the unwilling and at times rebellious subjects of England. Then 
occurred a happy circumstance, — the accession to the English 
throne of a prince of Welsh descent; for Henry Tudor, the first 
of the Tudor dynasty, was the grandson of a Welsh knight, named 

1 See Plate VI, facing p. 390. 



1 84 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§193 

Owen Tudor. With princes of the ancient British race reigning in 
London, the Welsh, from sullen subjects, were suddenly trans- 
formed into ardent and loyal supporters of the English throne. 

193. Wars with Scotland (i296-i328). In 1285 the ancient 
Celtic line of Scottish chiefs became extinct. A great number 
of claimants for the vacant throne immediately arose. Chief 
among these were Robert Bruce and John Balliol, distinguished 
noblemen of Norman descent, attached to the Scottish court. 
Edward was asked to act as arbitrator and decide to whom the 
crown should be given. He consented to do so, but only on 




Fig. 36. Carnarvon Castle. (From a photograph) 

This fortress was founded by Edward I in 1283. It is one of the most impressive of the 
decayed mediaeval strongholds of the British Isles 

condition that the Scottish nobles should do homage to him as 
their overlord. This they were constrained to do. Edward's 
commissioners then decided the question of the succession in 
favor of Balliol, who now took the crown of Scotland as the fully 
acknowledged vassal of the English sovereign (1292). 

Balliol soon broke the feudal ties which bound him to Edward 
and sought an alliance with the French king. In the war that 
followed the Scots were defeated and Scotland fell back as a for- 
feited fief into the hands of Edward (1296). As a sign that the 
Scottish kingdom had come to an end, Edward carried off to 
London the royal regalia, and with this a large stone, known as 
the Stone of Scone, upon which the Scottish kings, from time out 
of memory, had been accustomed to be crowned. The venerated 
"stone of destiny" was taken to Westminster Abbey, and there 



§193] 



WARS WITH SCOTLAND 



185 



put beneath the seat of a stately throne-chair, which to this day 
is used in the coronation ceremonies of the English sovereigns. 

The two countries were not long united. The Scotch people 
loved too well their ancient liberties to submit quietly to this 
extinguishment of their national independence. Under the inspi- 
ration and lead of the famous Sir William Wallace, an outlaw 
knight, all the Lowlands were soon 
in determined revolt. Wallace gained 
some successes,^ but at length was 
betrayed into Edward's hands. He 
was condemned to death as a traitor, 
and his head, garlanded with a crown 
of laurel, was fixed on London Bridge 
(1305). The romantic life of Wal- 
lace, his patriotic services, his heroic 
exploits, and his tragic death at once 
lifted him to the place that he has 
ever since held as the national hero 
of Scotland. 

The struggle in which Wallace had 
fallen was soon renewed by the al- 
most equally renowned hero Robert 
Bruce (grandson of the Robert Bruce 
mentioned above), who was the 
representative of the nobles, as Wal- 
lace had been of the common -people. 
With Edward H- Bruce fought the 
great battle of Bannockburn, near 

Stirling. Edward's army, consisting of a large body of horsemen 
and foot soldiers, was almost annihilated (1314). It was the 
most appalling disaster that had befallen the arms of the English 
people since the memorable defeat of Harold at Hastings. 

1 Notably a great victory at what is known as the battle of Stirling (1297). 

" Edward I died while on a campaign against the Scots (1307). He was one of the 
ablest and best beloved of English kings. He so improved the laws of the realm and 
made such great and beneficent changes in the administration of justice as to earn the 
title of the " English Justinian." 




Fig. 37. Coronation Chair 
IN Westminster Abbey 

Beneath the seat is the celebrated 

Scottish Stone of Scone, which 

was carried away from Scotland by 

Edward I 



1 86 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§194 

The independence of Scotland really dates from the great 
victory of Bannockburn, but the English were too proud to 
acknowledge it until after fourteen years more of war. Finally, in 
the year 1328, the young king Edward HI gave up all claim to the 
Scottish crown, and Scotland, with the hero Bruce as its king, took 
its place as an independent power among the nations of Europe. 

Respecting the results to both the English and the Scotch of 
the failure of the Edwards to subject Scotland to their rule, the 
historian Gardiner finely comments as follows: "IMorally, both 
nations were in the end the gainers. The hardihood and self- 
reliance of the Scottish character is distinctly to be traced to 
those years of struggle against a powerful neighbor. England, 
too, was the better for being balked of its prey. No nation can 
suppress the liberty of another without endangering its own." 

The independence gained by the Scotch at Bannockburn was 
maintained for nearly three centuries, — until 1603, when the 
crowns of England and Scotland were peacefully united in the 
person of James VI of Scotland, who became James I of Eng- 
land, the founder of the Stuart dynasty of English kings. During 
the greater part of these three hundred years the two countries 
were very quarrelsome neighbors. 

The Hundred Years' War (133 8-1 453) 

194. Causes of the War. The long and wasteful war between 
England and France known in history as the Hundred Years' 
War was a most eventful one, and its effect upon both England 
and France so important and lasting as to give it a prominent 
place in the records of the closing events of the Middle Ages. 

The war with Scotland was one of the things that led up to 
this war. All through that struggle France, as the old and 
jealous rival of England, was ever giving aid and encouragement 
to the Scots. Then the English possessions in France, for which 
the English king owed homage to the French sovereign as over- 
lord, were a source of constant dispute between the two countries. 
Trade jealousies also contributed to the causes of mutual hostility. 



195] 



THE BATTLE OF CRECY 



187 



Furthermore, upon the death of Charles IV of France, the last 
of the direct Capetian line, Edward III laid claim to the French 
crown in much the same way that William of Normandy centuries 
before had laid claim to the crown of England. 

195. The Battle of Crecy (i346). The first great combat 
of the long war was the famous battle of Crecy. Edward had 
invaded France with a strong force, made up largely of English 
bowmen, and had penetrated far into the country, ravaging the 
land as he went,^ when 
he finally halted and 
faced the pursuing 
French army near the 
village of Crecy, where 
he inflicted upon it a 
terrible defeat. Twelve 
hundred knights, the 
flower of French chiv- 
alry, and thousands of 
foot soldiers lay dead 
upon the field. 

The great battle of 
Crecy is memorable for 

several reasons, but chiefly because feudalism and chivalry- there 
received their deathblow. "The whole social and political fabric 
of the Middle Ages," writes Green, "rested on a military base, and 
its base was suddenly withdrawn. The churl had struck down the 
noble; the bowman proved more than a match, in sheer hard 
fighting, for the knight. From the day of Crecy feudalism tot- 
tered slowly but surely to its grave." The battles of the world 
were thereafter to be fought and won, not by mail-clad knights 
with battle-ax and lance, but by common foot soldiers with bow 
and gun. 

196. The Black Death (1347-1349). At just this time there 
fell upon Europe the awful pestilence known as the Black Death. 
The plague was introduced from the East by way of the trade 
routes of the Mediterranean, and from the southern countries 




Fig. 38. Charge of French Knights and 
Flight of English Arrows 



1 88 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§197 

spread in the course of a few years over the entire continent, its 
virulence without doubt being greatly increased by the unsanitary 
condition of the crowded towns and the wretched mode of living 
of the poorer classes. 

In many places almost all the people fell victims to the scourge. 
Some villages were left without an inhabitant. Many monasteries 
were almost emptied. In the Mediterranean and the Baltic ships 
were seen drifting about without a soul on board. Crops rotted 
unharvested in the fields; herds and flocks wandered about un- 
attended. It is estimated that from one third to one half of the 
population of Europe perished. Hecker, an historian of the 
pestilence, estimates the total number of victims at twenty-five 
millions. It was the most awful calamity that ever befell the 
human race.^ 

197. The Peasants' Revolt (i38i). The terrible scourge 
caused the contending nations for a time to forget their quarrel. 
But no sooner had a purer atmosphere breathed upon the con- 
tinent than their minds were again turned to war, and the old 
struggle was renewed with fresh eagerness. After a few years of 
fighting- a treaty of peace was framed which brought a cessation 
of the war for more than a half century. 

The most important event in English domestic history during 
this interval was what is known as the Peasants' Revolt. One 
of the grievances of the peasants grew out of their relations to the 
landlords. Many of the former serfs had commuted into money 
payments the personal services they owed their lords (sect. 91) 
and had thus got rid of this badge of serfdom. They were now 
free laborers working for hire. The rise in wages occasioned by 
the Black Death caused the landlords to regret the bargain they 
had made with their former serfs, since the commutation money 

1 Under the terror and excitement of the dreadful visitation, religious penitents, 
thinking to turn away the wrath of Heaven by unusual penances, went about in pro- 
cession, lacerating themselves with whips (hence they were called yiagc//anfs). This 
religious frenzy had its most remarkable manifestation in Germany. 

2 These years witnessed a double campaign in France by Edward III and his eldest 
son, known as the Black Prince from the color of the armor he wore. The campaign 
was made notable by the celebrated battle of Poitiers (1356), which was for the French 
a second Crecy. 



§198] THE PEASANTS' REVOLT 189 

would not now pay for as many days' labor as the serfs were 
originally bound to render. The landlords endeavored to escape 
from their bad bargain by means of legislation. They secured 
the enactment by Parliament of a law known as the Statute of 
Laborers (1351), which made it a misdemeanor for any unem- 
ployed laborer to refuse to work for the wages paid before the 
plague. Attempts to enforce this statute caused much discontent 
and trouble. 

The hard conditions under which those still held in serfdom 
led their lives constituted another grievance of a large class. In 
these words of one of the leaders of the uprising we hear the 
burden of their complaint: ''For what reason do they hold us 
in bondage? Are we not all descended from the same parents 
Adam and Eve? And what can they show, or what reasons give, 
why they should be more the masters than ourselves?" ■ 

The storm burst in 1381. The peasants rose in almost every 
part of England and marched in crowds upon London. The 
essence of their demands was the abolition of villanage (serfdom) 
in England. There was tumult and violence everywhere. Abbeys 
and manor houses were sacked, and the charters which were the 
evidence of the peasants' servitude were burned. The revolt had 
the usual issue. The bands of insurgents were finally scattered 
and their leaders were pitilessly put to death. 

Yet the insurrection was a success after all. The fear of another 
uprising and the inefficient character of sullen labor caused the 
landlords to hasten the process that had long been going on of 
commuting into money payments or rents the grudgingly rendered 
personal services of the serfs. At the end of a hundred years after 
the revolt there were very few serfs to be found in England. 

The abolition of serfdom was an important step in the nation- 
alization of the English people. Sweeping away artificial barriers 
between classes, it hastened the unification of English society and 
the creation of a true English nation. 

198. Battle of Agincourt (1415). During the reign in Eng- 
land of Henry V, France was unfortunate in having an insane 
king^ Charles VI; and Henry, taking advantage of the disorder 



190 



GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 



[§199 



into which the French kingdom naturally fell under these cir- 
cumstances, invaded the country with a powerful army, made up 
largely of archers. On the field of Agincourt the French suffered 
a most humiliating defeat, their terrible losses falling, as at Crecy, 
chiefly upon the knighthood. Five years later was concluded a 
treaty,' according to the terms of which the French crown, upon 
the death of Charles, was to go to the English king. 

199. Joan of Arc; the Relief of 
Orleans (1429). But patriotism was 
not yet wholly extinct among the 
French people. There were many who 
regarded the concessions of the treaty 
as not only weak and shameful but 
as unjust to the Dauphin Charles, who 
was thereby disinherited, and they ac- 
cordingly refused to be bound by its 
provisions. Consequently, when the 
poor insane king died, the terms of 
the treaty could not be carried out in 
full, and the war dragged on. The 
party that stood by their native prince, 
afterwards crowned as Charles VII, 
were at last reduced to most desperate 
straits. The greater part of the coun- 
try was in the hands of the English, who were holding in close 
siege the important city of Orleans. 

But the darkness was the deep gloom that precedes the dawn. 
A better day was about to rise over the distressed country. Re- 
ligious enthusiasm was to accomplish what patriotism alone could 
not do. A strange deliverer now appears,— the famous Joan of 
Arc. This young peasant girl, with soul sensitive to impressions 
from brooding over her country's wrongs and sufferings, saw 
visions and heard voices which bade her undertake the work of 
delivering France. She was obedient unto the heavenly voices. 




Fig. 39. Joan of Arc 

We have no authentic likeness of 
Joan of Arc. The above must be 
regarded as an idealized portrait 



1 The Treaty of Troyes, 1420, 



§200] EFFECTS ON ENGLAND OF THE WAR 191 

Rejected by some, yet received by most of her countrymen 
as a messenger from Heaven, the maiden kindled throughout the 
land a flame of enthusiasm that nothing could resist. Inspiring 
the dispirited French soldiers with new courage, she forced the 
English to raise the siege of Orleans (from which exploit she be- 
came known as the Maid of Orleans) and speedily brought about 
the coronation of Prince Charles at Rheims (1429). Shortly 
afterward she fell into the hands of the English, was tried by 
ecclesiastical judges for witchcraft and heresy, and was condemned 
to be burned as a heretic and a witch. Her martyrdom took place 
at Rouen in the year 1431. 

But the spirit of the Maid had already taken possession of the 
French nation. From this on, the war, though long continued, 
went steadily against the English. Little by little they were pushed 
off from the soil they had conquered, and driven out of their own 
Gascon lands of the south as well, until finally they held nothing 
in the land save Calais. Thus ended, in 1453, the year of the 
fall of Constantinople, the Hundred Years' War. 

200. Effects upon England of the War. The most important 
effects of the war as concerns England were the enhancement of 
the power of the Lower House of Parliament and the awakening 
of a national spirit. The maintaining of the long and costly 
quarrel called for such heavy expenditures of men and money 
that the English kings were made more dependent than hitherto 
upon the representatives of the people, who were careful to make 
their grants of supplies conditional upon the correction of abuses 
or the confirming of their privileges. Thus the war served to 
make the Commons a power in the English government. 

Again, as the war was participated in by all classes alike, the 
great victories of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt aroused a national 
pride, which led to a closer union between the different elements 
of society. Normans and. English, enlisted in a common enter- 
prise, were fused by the ardor of a common patriotic enthusiasm 
into a single people. The real national life of England dates 
from this time. 



192 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§ 201 

The Wars of the Roses (1455-1485) 

201. The Two Roses; the Battle of Bosworth Field. The 
Wars of the Roses is the name given to a long contest between 
the adherents of the houses of York and Lancaster, rival branches 
of the royal family of England. The strife was so named because 
the Yorkists adopted as their badge a white rose and the Lancas- 
trians a red one. The battle of Bosworth Field (1485) marks the 
close of the war. In this fight King Richard III, the last of the 
House of York, was overthrown and slain by Henry Tudor, Earl 
of Richmond, who was crowned on the field with the diadem 
which had fallen from the head of Richard, and saluted as King 
Henry VII. With him began the dynasty of the Tudors. 

202. The Effects of the Wars. The first important result of 
the Wars of the Roses was the ruin of the baronage of England. 
One half of the nobility were slain. Those that survived were 
ruined, their estates having been wasted or confiscated during the 
progress of the struggle. Not a single great house retained its 
old-time weaJth and influence. The war marks the final downfall 
of feudalism in England. 

The second result of the struggle sprang from the first. This 
was the great peril into which English liberty was cast by the 
ruin of the nobility. It was primarily the barons who had forced 
the Great Charter from King John, and who had kept him and 
his successors from reigning like absolute monarchs. Now the 
once proud and powerful barons were ruined, and their confis- 
cated estates had gone to increase the influence and patronage of 
the sovereign, who when strong and willful, like Henry VIII, did 
pretty much as he pleased and became unjust and tyrannical. 
In short, upon the ruins of the baronage was erected something 
like a royal despotism. Not until the revolution of the seven- 
teenth century did the people, by overturning the throne of the 
Stuarts, curb the undue power of the crown and recover their 
lost liberties. 



§203] FORMATION OF MODERN ENGLISH 193 

Growth of the English Language and Literature 

203. The Language. From the Norman Conquest to the 
middle of the fourteenth century there were in use in England 
three languages: Norman French was the speech of the con- 
querors and the medium of polite literature; Saxon, or Old 
English, was the tongue of the conquered people; while Latin 
was the language of the laws and records, of the Church services, 
and of the works of the learned. 

Modern English is the old Saxon tongue worn and improved 
by use and enriched by a large infusion of Norman-French 
words, with less important additions from the Latin and other 
languages. It took the place of the Norman-French in the 
courts of law about the middle of the fourteenth century. At this 
time the language was broken up into many dialects, and the 
expression "King's English" is supposed to have referred to the 
standard form employed in state documents and in use at court. 

204. Effect of the Norman Conquest on English Literature. 
The blow that struck down King Harold and his brave thanes on 
the field of Hastings silenced for the space of above a century the 
voice of English literature. The tongue of the conquerors became 
the speech of the court, the nobility, and the clergy; while the 
language of the despised English was, like themselves, crowded 
out of every place of honor. But when, after a few generations, 
the downtrodden race began to reassert itself, English literature 
emerged from ' its obscurity and, with an utterance somewhat 
changed, — yet unmistakably it is the same voice, — resumed its 
interrupted lesson and its broken song. 

205. Chaucer (i34o?-i4oo). Holding a position high above 
all other writers of early English is Geoffrey Chaucer. He is 
the first in time, and, after Shakespeare, perhaps the first in 
genius, among the great poets of the English-speaking race. 
He is reverently called the " Father of English poetry." 

Chaucer stands between two ages, the mediaeval and the mod- 
ern. He felt not only the influences of the age of feudalism 
which was passing away but also those of the new age of 



194 



GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 



L§206 



learning and freedom which was dawning. It is because he was 
highly sensitive to these various influences and reflects his sur- 
roundings faithfully in his writings that these are so valuable as 
interpreters of the period in which he lived. 

Chaucer's greatest and most important work is his Canterbury 
Tales. The poet represents himself as one of a company of story- 
telling pilgrims who have set out on a journey to the tomb of 
Thomas Becket at Canterbury (sect. i88). The persons, thirty- 
two in number, making up the party, represent almost every 
calling and position in the middle class of English society. The 
prologue, containing characterizations of the different members 




Fig. 40. Plowing Scene, (From a manuscript of the fourteenth century) 



of the company, is the most valuable part of the production. 
Here as in a gallery we have shown us faithful portraits of our 
ancestors of the fourteenth century. 

206. William Langland. The genial Chaucer shows us the 
pleasant, attractive side of English society and life; William 
Langland, another writer of the same period, in a poem called 
the Vision of Piers the Ploivnian (1362), lights up for us the world 
of the poor and the oppressed. 

This poem quivers with sympathy for the hungry, labor- worn 
peasant, doomed to a life of weary routine and hopelessness. 
The long wars with France had demoralized the nation; the Black 
Death had just reaped its awful harvest among the ill-clad, ill-fed, 
and ill-housed poor. Occasional outbursts of wrath against the 
favored classes are the mutterings of the storm soon to burst upon 
the social world in the fury of the Peasants' Revolt, and later upon 
the religious world in the upheavals of the Reformation. 



§ 207] JOHN WYCLIFFE 195 

207. John Wycliffe (1324-1334) and the Lollards. Foremost 
among the reformers and religious writers of the period under 
review was John Wycliffe, called "the Morning Star of the Ref- 
ormation." This bold reformer attacked first many of the prac- 
tices and then certain of the doctrines of the Church. He gave 
the English people the first translation of the entire Bible in the 
English language. There was no press at this time to multiply 
editions of the book, but by means of manuscript copies it was 
widely circulated and read. Its influence was very great, and 
from its appearance may be dated the beginnings of the Ref- 
ormation in England. 

Wycliffe did not wholly escape persecution in life, and his 
bones were not permitted to rest in peace. His enemies attrib- 
uted to his teachings the unrest and the revolt of the peasants, 
and this caused him to be looked upon by many as a dangerous 
agitator. In 141 5 the Council of Constance (sect. 154) pro- 
nounced his doctrines heretical, and ordered that his body be 
taken from its tomb and burned. This was done, and the ashes 
were thrown into a neighboring stream called the Swift. "This 
brook," in the words of the old ecclesiastical writer Thomas Fuller, 
"hath conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn 
into the Narrow Seas, they into the ocean; and thus the ashes 
of Wycliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed 
all the world over." 

The followers of Wycliffe became known as Lollards (babblers), 
a term applied to them in derision. Their religious opinions were 
regarded as erroneous or as heretical; and heresy at that time 
was hated and feared, at least by those in authority. Parliament 
passed a law (1401) known as the Statute for the Burning of 
Heretics, which made it the duty of the proper civil officers, in 
cases of persons convicted of heresy by the ecclesiastical courts, 
to receive the same and "before the people, in a high place, cause 
them to be burnt, that such punishment may strike fear to the 
hearts of others." 

Heretics had been burned in England before the passage of 
this law, but now for the first time did Parliament by special 



196 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§208 

enactment make this form of punishment the penalty for reli- 
gious dissent. It was the opening of a sad chapter in English 
history. Under the statute many persons whose only fault was 
the teaching or the holding of religious opinions different from 
those of the Church perished at the stake. 

208. Caxton (1412-1491) and the Printing Press. The great 
religious movement referred to in the preceding paragraph, which 
during the sixteenth century transformed the face of England, 
was hastened by the introduction of printing into the island by 
William Caxton towards the close of the fifteenth century. The 
first work which appeared from his press was entitled the Game 
of Chess (1474). He also printed Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 
and almost everything else worth reproducing then existing in 
the English language, besides various works from the Latin and 
the French. 

The eagerness with which the books that fell from Caxton's 
press were seized and read by all classes indicates the increasing 
activity and thoughtfulness of the public mind. Manifestly a 
new day — one to be filled with intellectual and moral revolutions 
— was breaking over the land of Alfred and of Wycliffe. 

II. FRANCE 

209. Beginnings of the French Kingdom. The separate his- 
tory of France may be regarded as beginning with the partition 
of Verdun in 843.^ At that time the Carolingians, of whom we 
have already learned (Chapter VII), exercised the royal power. 
Towards the close of the tenth century, the first of the Capetian 
dynasty came to the throne. 

We shall now direct attention to some of the most important 
transactions of the period covered by the mediaeval Capetian 
kings. Our special aim will be to give prominence to those matters 
which concern the gradual consolidation of the French monarchy 
and the development among the French people of the sentiment 
of nationality. 

1 See sect. 7S and accompanying map. 



§210] 



FRANCE UNDER THE CAPETIANS 



197 



France under the Direct Line of the Capetians 
(987-1328) 

210. General Statement. The Capetian dynasty takes its 
name from Hugh Capet, Duke of Francia, the first of the house. 
The direct line embraced fourteen kings.^ 

The first Capetian king differed from his vassal counts and 
dukes simply in having a more dignified title; his power was 
scarcely greater than that of many of the lords who paid him 
homage as their suzerain; but before the close of the Middle Ages 
France had come to be one of the most compact and powerful 
kingdoms in Europe. How various circumstances conspired to 
build up the power of the kings at the expense of that of the 
great feudal lords and of the Church will appear as we go on. 

In this place, however, it should be noted that nothing con- 
tributed more to the strength and influence of the monarchy 
during the period of which we are speaking than the fortunate 
circumstance that for eleven generations, spanning more than 
three centuries, no French king lacked a son to whom to transmit 
his authority. With no disputed successions the monarchy grew 
steadily in power and prestige. 

The most noteworthy events of the earlier Capetian period, 
regarded from the point of view of the growth of the French 
kingdom, were the acquisition by the French crown of the greater 
part of the English possessions in France, the Crusades, the 
admission of the Third Estate to the National Assembly, and the 
abolition of the Order of the Templars. Of these several matters 
we will now speak in order. 

211. The Acquisition of the English Possessions in France. 
In our sketch of the growth of England we spoke of the extensive 



1 Table of the Capetian Kings (direct line) 



Hugh Capet ... 
Robert 1 1 (the Pious) 

Henry I 

Philip I 

Louis VI (the Fat) . 
Louis V 1 1 (the Young) 
Philip II (Augustus) 



987-996 Louis VIII (the Lion) 

996-1031 Louis IX (the Saint) 

1031-1060 Philip III (the Bold) 

1060-110S Philip IV (the Fair) . 

1108-1137 Louis X {/e Nirt in) . 

1137-1180 Philip V (the Tall) . 

1 180-1223 Charles IV (the Fair) 



1223-1226 
1226-1270 
1270-1285 
i2S5-i3r4 
1314-1316 
1316-1322 
1322-1328 



198 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§212 

possessions of the first Angevin kings in France, and told how 
the larger part of these feudal lands was lost through King John's 
misconduct and resumed as forfeited fiefs by his suzerain Philip 
Augustus, king of France (sect. 189). The annexation of these 
large and flourishing provinces to the crown of France brought a 
vast accession of power and patronage to the king, who was now 
easily the superior of any of his great vassals. 

212. The French and the Crusades. The age of the Capetians 
was the age of the Crusades. These romantic expeditions, while 
stirring all Christendom, appealed especially to the ardent, imagi- 
native genius of the Gallic race. Three Capetian kings, Louis VII, 
Philip Augustus, and Louis IX, were themselves leaders of cru- 
sades. It was the great predominance of French-speaking persons 
among the first crusaders which led the Eastern peoples to call 
them all Franks, the term still used throughout the East to 
designate Europeans, irrespective of their nationality. 

But it is only the influence of the Crusades on the French mon- 
archy that we need to notice in this place. They tended very 
materially to weaken the power and influence of the feudal nobil- 
ity, and in a corresponding degree to strengthen the authority of 
the crown and add to its dignity. The way in which they brought 
about this transfer of power from the aristocracy to the king has 
been already explained in the chapter on the Crusades (sect. 142). 

In that same chapter we also saw how the crusade against the 
Albigenses resulted in the almost total extirpation of that hereti- 
cal sect and in the final acquisition by the French crown of large 
and rich territories formerly held by the counts of Toulouse, the 
patrons of the heretics, 

213. Admission of the Third Estate to the National As- 
sembly (1302). The event of the greatest political significance 
in the Capetian age was the admission, in the reign of Philip the 
Fair, of the representatives of the towns to the National Assembly. 
This transaction is in French history what the creation of the 
House of Commons is in English history (sect. 191). 

A dispute having arisen between Philip and the Pope respecting 
the control of the offices and revenues of the Church in France 





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J. l I 'Flpfs lielri by other Vassals 



§214] DESTRUCTION OF THE TEMPLARS 199 

(sect. 151), Philip, in order to rally to his support all classes 
throughout his kingdom, called a meeting of the National Assem- 
bly, to which he invited representatives of the burghers, or inhabit- 
ants of the towns. This council had hitherto been made up 
of two estates only, — the nobles and the clergy; now is added 
\vhat comes to be known as the Tiers Efat, or Third Estate, while 
the assembly henceforth is called the Estates- General or States- 
General. Before the growing power of this Third Estate — a power 
developed, however, outside and not within the National Assembly 
itself — we shall see the Church, the nobility, and the monarchy 
all go down, just as in England we shall see clergy, nobles, and 
king yield to the rising power of the English Commons. 

214. The Abolition of the Order of the Templars (1307). 
We have already, in connection with the history of the Crusades, 
learned about the origin of the Order of the Templars (sect. 130). 
In recognition of their services the Templars had had bestowed 
upon them, through the gifts of the pious and the grants of 
princes, enormous riches and the most unusual privileges. The 
number of manors and castles that they held in the different 
countries of Europe, but chiefly in France, is estimated at from 
nine to ten thousand. But gain in wealth and power had been 
accompanied apparently by a loss in virtue and piety. At all 
events the most incredible rumors of the immoral and blasphemous 
character of the secret rites of the society were spread abroad. 

Taking advantage of the feeling against the Order, Philip re- 
solved upon its destruction. He was moved doubtless by various 
motives, but beyond all question it was the riches of the society, — 
which Philip coveted, — and not its sins, that were the real cause 
of its undoing. 

The blow fell suddenly. Upon a preconcerted day the chiefs 
of the Order throughout the kingdom were arrested, and many 
of them afterwards put to death on various charges.'^ The great 
crime brought to Philip enormous wealth, which greatly enhanced 
the growing power and patronage of the crown. 

1 The Order was formally abolished in 1312 by Pope Clement V, the first of the 
Avignon popes, who was wholly under the influence of Philip. 



2 00 GROWTH OF THE^ NATIONS [§215 

France under the Medieval Valois^ (1328-1498) 

215. Effects upon France of the Hundred Years' War. The 
main interest of the period of French history upon which we here 
enter attaches to that long struggle between England and France 
known as the Hundred Years' War. Having already, in connec- 
tion with English affairs, touched upon the causes and incidents 
of this war, we shall here speak only of the effects of the strug- 
gle on the French people and kingdom. Among these must be 
noticed the almost complete prostration of the French feudal 
aristocracy, which was already tottering to its fall through various 
undermining influences; the growth of the power of the king, a 
consequence, largely, of the ruin of the nobility; and, lastly, the 
awakening of a feeling of nationality and the drawing together 
of the hitherto isolated sections of the country by the attraction 
of a common and patriotic enthusiasm. 

Speaking in a very general manner, we may say that by the 
close of the long war French feudalism, as a political system and 
force, was over, and that France had become, partly in spite of 
the war but more largely by reason of it, not only a great mon- 
archy but a great nation. 

216. Louis XI and Charles the Bold of Burgundy. The 
foundations of the French monarchy, laid and cemented in the way 
we have seen, were greatly enlarged and strengthened by the 
unscrupulous measures of Louis XI (1461-1483), who was a per- 
fect Ulysses in cunning and deceit. His maxim was, "He who 
does not know how to dissimulate does not know how to reign." 
The great feudal lords who still retained power and influence he 
brought to destruction one after another, and united their fiefs 
to the royal domains. 

1 The House of Valois was a branch of the Capetian family. The following table 
exhibits the names of the mediasval Valois kings : 

Philip VI 132S-1350 Charles VII (the Victorious) . 1422-1461 

John (the Crood) 1 350-1364 Louis XI 1461-14S3 

Charles V (the Wise) . . . 1364-1380 Charles VIII (the Affable) . 1483-1498 

Charles VI (the Well-Beloved) 1380-1422 



§217] CHARLES VIII IN ITALY 201 

Of all the vassal nobles ruined by the craft of Louis, the most 
renowned and powerful was Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy. 
Charles was endeavoring, out of a great patchwork of petty feudal 
states and semi-independent cantons and cities, to build up a 
kingdom between Germany and France/ Louis was frequently 
warring with the duke and forever intriguing against him. Upon 
the death of the duke — he was killed in 1477 i^^ ^ battle with 
the Swiss — Louis, without clear right, seized a considerable part 
of his dominions. 

By cession and by inheritance Louis also added to France 
important lands in the south (Provence and other territory), 
which gave the French kingdom a wider frontage upon the 
Mediterranean and made the Pyrenees its southern defense. 

217. Invasion of Italy by Charles VIII. Charles VIII (1483- 
1498), son and successor of Louis XI, was the last of the mediae- 
val Valois. Through his marriage to Anne of Brittany he brought 
that great fief, which had hitherto constituted an almost inde- 
pendent state, under the direct rule of the crown. 

Charles was a romantic youth. It was his dream to make 
France instead of Germany the head of the world empire. With 
a standing army, created during the latter years of the war with 
England, at his command, he invaded Italy, intent on the con- 
quest of Naples, — to which he laid claim on the strength of 
an old bequest, — -proposing, with that state subdued, to lead a 
crusade to the East against the Turks. 

Charles' march through Italy was a mere '^ promenade." In 
the early spring of 1495 he entered Naples in triumph, where, 
amidst splendid ceremonies, he caused himself to be crowned 
" King of Naples, Sicily, and Jerusalem." Meanwhile the king of 
Aragon, the Venetians, and other powers were uniting their armies 
to punish the insolence and check the vaulting ambition of the 
would-be emperor and crusader. Only at the cost of a large part of 
his army did Charles succeed in making good his retreat into France. 

1 His success would have meant practically a restoration of the old Lotharingian 
kingdom (see map, p. 66). It seems one of the misfortunes of history that Charles did 
not succeed in his ambition. Such a kingdom as he planned might have proved a 
serviceable " buffer state " between France and Germany. 



202 



GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 



[§218 



This enterprise of Charles is noteworthy not only because it 
marks the commencement of a long series of campaigns carried 
on by the French in Italy, but further on account of Charles' 
army having been made up largely of paid troops instead of 
feudal retainers, which fact assures us that the feudal system, as 
a military organization, had virtually come to an end. 



m,S 



The Beginnings of French Literature 

218. The Troubadours. The contact of the old Latin speech 

in Gaul with that of the Teutonic invaders gave rise there to two 

, very distinct dialects. 

;^-r ^ '^"1 One was the Provencal , 

}, r '" or Laiigue d'Oc, the 

tongue of southern 
France and of the ad- 
joining regions of Spain 
and Italy; and the 
other French proper, 
or Languc d'O'il, the 
language of northern 
France. 

About the begin- 
ning of the twelfth 
century, by which 
time the Provencal 
tongue had become 
settled and somewhat 
polished, literature in France first began to find a voice in the songs 
of the Troubadours, the poets of the South. It is instructive to 
note that it was the home of the Albigensian heresy, the land 
that had felt the influence of every Mediterranean civiliza- 
tion, that was also the home of the Troubadour literature. The 
counts of Toulouse, the protectors of the heretics, were also the 
patrons of the poets. It was, as we have intimated, the same 
fierce persecution which uprooted the heretical faith that stilled 
the songs of the Troubadours. 




Fig. 41. I\ THE Land of the Troubadours 

— THE Castle of Foix. (From Smith, TIic 

Troubadours at Home) 



§ 219] THE TROUVEURS 203 

The compositions of the Troubadours were, for the most part, 
love songs and satires. Among the countless minstrels of the 
South were some who acquired a fame which was spread through- 
out Christendom. The verses of the Troubadours were sung in 
every land, and to their stimulating influence the early poetry of 
almost every people of Europe is largely indebted. 

219. The Trouveiirs. These were the poets of northern 
France, who composed in the Langue d'O'il, or Old French tongue. 
They flourished during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. As 
the Troubadours of the South found worthy patrons in the counts 
of Toulouse, so did the Trouveurs of the North find admiring en- 
couragers in the dukes of Normandy. 

There was, however, a wide difference between the literature 
of southern and that of northern France. The compositions of 
the Troubadours were almost exclusively lyric songs, while those 
of the Trouveurs were chiefly epic or narrative poems, called 
romances. These latter celebrated the chivalrous exploits and 
loves of great princes and knights and displayed at times almost 
Homeric animation and grandeur. Many of them gather about 
three famfliar names, — Charlemagne, King Arthur, and Alexan- 
der the Great, — thus forming what are designated as the cycle 
of Charlemagne, the Arthurian or Armorican cycle, and the 
Alexandrian.^ 

The influence of these French romances upon the springing 
literatures of Europe was most inspiring and helpful. Nor has 
their influence yet ceased. Thus in English literature, not only did 
Chaucer and Spenser and all the early island poets draw inspiration 
from these fountains of Continental song, but the later Tennyson, 
in his Idylls of the King, has fllustrated the power over the 
imagination yet possessed by the Arthurian poems of the old 
Trouveurs. 

220. Froissart's Chronicles. The first really noted prose 
writer in French literature was Froissart (about 133 7-1 410), 

1 These epics, it will be noticed, represent the three elements in the civilization 
of western Europe, — the German, the Celtic, and the Grasco-Roman. It was the 
Crusades that brought in a fresh relay of tales and legends from the lands of the 
East (sect. 143). 



2 04 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§221 

whose picturesqueness of style and skill as a story-teller have won 
for him the title of the "French Herodotus." Born, as he was, 
only a little after the opening of the Hundred Years' War, and 
knowing personally many of the actors in that long struggle, it 
was fitting that he should have become, as he did, the annalist 
of those stirring times. 

Froissart's inimitable Chronicles have an added value from the 
age in which they were written. It was, as we have learned, a 
transition period. Feudalism was fast passing away and chivalry 
was beginning to feel the dissolving breath of a new era. But as 
the forests never clothe themselves in more gorgeous colors than 
when already touched by decay, so chivalry never arrayed itself 
in more splendid magnificence than when about to die. In the 
age of Edward III and the Black Prince it displayed its most 
sumptuous and prodigal splendor. And this is the age which the 
rare genius of Froissart has painted for us. 

III. SPAIN 

221. The Beginnings of Spain. When, in the eighth century, 
the Saracens swept like a wave over Spain, the mountains of 
Asturias and Cantabria in the northwest corner of the peninsula 
afforded a refuge for the most resolute of the Christian chiefs who 
refused to submit their necks to the Moslem yoke. These brave 
and hardy warriors not only successfully defended the hilly dis- 
tricts that formed their asylum but gradually pushed back the 
invaders and regained control of a portion of the fields and cities 
that had been lost. 

By the opening of the eleventh century several little Christian 
states, among which we must notice especially the states of Castile 
and Aragon because of the prominent part they were to play in 
later history, had been established upon the ground thus recov- 
ered or always maintained. Castile was at first simply ''a line of 
castles" against the Moors, whence its name. 

222. Union of Castile and Aragon (1479). For several cen- 
turies the princes of the little states to which we have referred 



§ 223] THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA 205 

kept up an incessant warfare with their Mohammedan neighbors; 
but, owing to dissensions among themselves, they were unable to 
combine in any effective way for the complete reconquest of their 
ancient possessions. But the marriage, in 1469, of Ferdinand, 
prince of Aragon, to Isabella, princess of Castile, paved the way 
for the virtual union in 1479 of these two leading states, both 
greatly enlarged since the eleventh century, into a single kingdom. 
By this happy union the quarrels of these two rival principalities 
were composed, and they were now free to employ their united 
strength in effecting what the Christian princes amidst all their 
contentions had never lost sight of, — the expulsion of the Moors 
from the peninsula. 

223. The Conquest of Granada (1492). At the time when 
the basis of the Spanish monarchy was laid by the union of Castile 
and Aragon, the Mohammedan possessions had been reduced, by 
the constant pressure of the Christian chiefs through eight cen- 
turies, to a very limited dominion in the south of Spain. Here 
the Moors had established a strong, well-compacted state, known 
as the Kingdom of Granada. As soon as Ferdinand and Isabella 
had settled 'the affairs of their dominions, they began to make 
preparation for the reduction of this last stronghold of the 
Moorish power in the peninsula. 

The Moors made a desperate defense of their little state. The 
struggle lasted for ten years. City after city fell into the hands 
of the Christian knights, and finally Granada, pressed by an army 
of seventy thousand, was forced to surrender, and the Cross 
replaced the Crescent on its walls and towers (1492). The 
Moors, or Moriscos, as they were called, were allowed to remain 
in the country, though under many annoying restrictions. What 
is known as their expulsion occurred at a later date (sect. 324). 

The fall of Granada holds an important place among the many 
significant events that mark the latter half of the fifteenth cen- 
tury. It marked the end, after an existence of almost eight hun- 
dred years, of Mohammedan rule in the Spanish peninsula, and 
thus formed an offset to the progress of the Moslems in eastern 
Europe and the loss to the Christian world of Constantinople. 



2o6 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§224 

224. Influence upon the Spanish Character of the Moorish 
Domination and the Moorish Wars. The long wars which the 
Spanish Christians waged against the Arab Moors left a deep 
impress upon the national character. In the first place, the oppor- 
tunity which they afforded for knightly service and romantic ad- 
venture heightened that chivalrous spirit of which more than 
traces are noticeable in the feelings and the bearing of the Spaniard 
of to-day. 

In the second place, they made religion a thing of patriotism, 
and thus aroused religious zeal and fostered the growth of intol- 
erance. The unfortunate bias and temper thus imparted to the 
Spanish national character set Spain apart from the other Western 
nations, and affords the key to much of her later history both in 
Europe and in the New World. For illustration, it was, without 
doubt, the development in the Spanish people of this zealous 
religious spirit that helped to prepare the ground in Spain for 
the setting up there of the terrible tribunal of the Inquisition. 

225. The Inquisition. The Inquisition, or Holy Office, was 
a tribunal the purpose of which was the detection and punish- 
ment of heresy. Its establishment in Spain casts a dark shadow 
upon the reign of the illustrious sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella. 

Being employed by the government for the securing of politi- 
cal as well as religious ends, the tribunal became an instrument 
of the most incredible tyranny. The Jews were in this earlier 
period the chief victims of the court. Accompanying the an- 
nouncement of the sentences of the Holy Office there were solemn 
public ceremonies known as the auto-da- je ("act of faith"). The 
assembly was held in some church or in the public square, and 
the following day those condemned to death were burned out- 
side the city walls. It is particularly to this last act of the drama 
that the term ai/to-da-fe has come popularly to be applied. 

The Inquisition secured for Spain unity of religious belief, but 
only through suppressing freedom of thought and thereby sapping 
the strength and virility of the Spanish people. Whatever was 
most promising and vigorous was withered and blasted or was cast 
out. In the year 1492 the Jews, under circumstances of great 




The Alhambra: Palace of the Moorish Kings at Granada 
(From a photograph) 



§226] 



THE EPIC OF THE CID 



207 



distress, were expelled from the country. It is estimated that 
between two and three hundred thousand of this unhappy race 
were forced to seek an asylum in other lands. 

Thus, at the same time that Ferdinand and Isabella were doing 
so much to foster the national life, their unfortunate religious zeal 
was planting the upas tree which was destined completely to over- 
shadow and poison the springing energies of the nation. 

226. Death of Ferdinand and Isabella. Queen Isabella died 
in 1504, and Ferdinand followed her in the year 1516, upon 




Fig. 42. Recumbent Effigy of Queen Isabella. (From the 
magnificent sarcophagus in the Royal Chapel at Granada) 

which latter event the crown of Spain descended to their grandson, 
Charles, of whom we shall hear much hereafter as the Emperor 
Charles V. With his reign the modern history of Spain begins. 



Beginnings of the Spanish Language and Literature 

227. The Language. After the union of Castile and Aragon 
it was the language of the former that became the speech of the 
Spanish court. During the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella it 
gradually gained ascendancy over the numerous dialects of the 
country and became at last the national speech. By the conquests 
and colonizations of the sixteenth century this Castilian speech 
was destined to become only less widely spread than is the 
English tongue. 

228. The Poem of the Cid. Castilian or Spanish literature 
begins in the twelfth century with the romance poem of the Cid, 
one of the best-known literary productions of the mediaeval period. 
This grand national poem was the outgrowth of the sentiments 
inspired by the long struggle between the Spanish Christians and 



208 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§ 229 

the Mohammedan Moors. Its influence in evoking the sentiment 
of Spanish patriotism and in stimulating the spirit of Spanish 
nationality has been likened to the effects of the poems of Homer 
in creating fraternal bonds between the cities of ancient Hellas. 



IV. GERMANY 

229. Beginnings of the Kingdom of Germany. The history 
of Germany as a separate kingdom begins with the break-up of 
the empire of Charlemagne, about the middle of the ninth cen- 
tury (sect. 78). The part east of the Rhine, with which fragment 
alone we are now concerned, was called the Kingdom of the 
Eastern Franks, in distinction from that west of the river, which 
was known as the Kingdom of the Western Franks. 

This Eastern Frankish kingdom was made up of several groups 
of tribes, — the Saxons, the Suabians, the Thuringians, the Bava- 
rians, and the East Franks, of which the latter were at this time 
chief, and gave name to the whole. Closely allied in race, speech, 
manners, and social arrangements, all these peoples seemed ready 
to be welded into a close and firm nation. That such was not 
the outcome of the historical development during mediaeval times 
was due largely to the adoption by the German emperors of an 
unfortunate policy respecting a world empire. This matter will 
be explained in the following sections. 

230. Consequences to Germany of the Revival of the Empire 
by Otto the Great. We have in another place, while tracing 
the history of the Empire, told how Otto I of Germany, in imi- 
tation of Charlemagne, restored the imperial authority (sect. 79). 
Otto's scheme respecting the establishment of a world empire 
was a grand one but, as had been demonstrated by the failure 
of the attempt of the great Charles, was an utterly impracticable 
ideal. Yet the pursuit of this phantom by the German kings 
resulted in the most woeful consequences to Germany. Trying 
to grasp too much, the German rulers seized nothing at all. 
Attempting to be emperors of the world, they failed to become 
even kings of Germany. While they were engaged in outside 



§ 231] THE HOHENSTAUFEN EMPERORS 209 

enterprises their home affairs were neglected and the vassal princes 
of Germany succeeded in increasing their power and making 
themselves practically independent. 

Thus while the kings of England, France, and Spain were 
gradually consolidating their dominions and building up strong 
centralized monarchies on the ruins of feudalism, the preoccupied 
sovereigns of Germany were allowing the country to become split 
up into a great number of semi-independent states, the ambitions 
and jealousies of whose rulers were to postpone the uniiication of 
Germany for several hundred years — until our own day. 

Had the emperors inflicted loss and disaster upon Germany 
alone through this misdirection of their energies, the case would 
not be so lamentable; but the fair fields of Italy were for cen- 
turies made the camping fields of the imperial armies, and the 
whole peninsula was kept embroiled with the quarrels of Guelphs 
and Ghibellines, and thus the nationalization of the Italian people 
was also delayed for centuries. 

231. Germany under the Hohenstaufen Emperors (ii38- 
1254). The matter of chief importance during the rule of the 
Hohenstaufens was, as we have learned, the long and bitter con- 
flict waged between them and the popes. 

The name of the most noted of the Hohenstaufen emperors — 
Frederick Barbarossa^ — is familiar to us. Frederick gave Ger- 
many a good and strong government, and gained a sure place 
in the affections of the German people, who came to regard him 
as the representative of the sentiment of German nationality. 
Other emperors, when engaged in contentions with the Pope, 
always had a great many among their own German subjects ready 
to join the Roman See against their own sovereign; but all classes 
in Germany rallied about their beloved Frederick. When news 
of his death was brought back from the East (sect, 132) they 
refused to believe that he was dead, and as time passed a legend 
arose which told how he slept in a cavern beneath one of his 
castles on a mountain top, and how, when the ravens should cease 
to circle about the hill, he would appear, to make the German 
people a nation united and strong. 



210 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§232 

Frederick Barbarossa was followed by his son Henry VI (1190- 
1197), who, by marriage, had acquired a claim to the kingdom 
of Sicily/ Almost all his time and resources were spent in 
attempts to reduce that remote realm to a state of proper sub- 
jection to his authority. By leading the emperors to neglect their 
German subjects and interests, this southern kingdom proved a 
fatal dower to the Hohenstaufen house. 

By the close of the Hohenstaufen period Germany was divided 
into about three hundred virtually independent states, the princes 
and the cities having taken advantage of the prolonged absences 
of the emperors, or their troubles with the popes and the Italian 
cities, to free themselves almost completely from the control of 
the crown. There was really no longer either a German Kingdom 
or a Holy Roman Empire. The royal as well as the imperial title 
had become an empty name. 

232. The Seven Electors; the Interregnum (1254-1273). In 
order to make intelligible the transactions of that period in Ger- 
man history known as the Interregnum, which we have now 
reached, we must here say a word about the Electors of the 
Empire. 

When, in the beginning of the tenth century, the German 
Carolingian line became extinct, the great nobles of the king- 
dom assumed the right of choosing the successor of the last of 
the house, and Germany thus becamg an elective feudal mon- 
archy. In the course of time a few of the leading nobles usurped 
the right of choosing the king, and these princes became known 
as Electors. There were at the end of the Hohenstaufen period 
seven princes who enjoyed this important privilege, four of whom 
were secular princes and three spiritual. This electoral body 
held in its hands the destinies of Germany. 

.We are now in a position to understand the shameful trans- 
action of the sale of the German crown. The Electors, like 

1 The Hohenstaufen held the kingdom until 1265, when the Pope gave it as a fief to 
Charles I of Anjou (brother of Louis IX of France). Charles' oppressive rule led to a 
revolt of his island subjects and to the great massacre known as the Sicilian Vespers 
(1282), one of the great tragedies of history. All the hated race of Frenchmen were 
either killed or driven out of the island. 



§233] THE INTERREGNUM 211 

the pretorians of ancient Rome,^ put up the bauble for sale. 
There were two bidders, both foreigners, Richard of Cornwall 
(brother of the English king Henry HI) and Alphonso, king of 
Castile. Each offered the Electors large bribes, and so both were 
elected, — one of the Electors voting for both candidates. Al- 
though Alphonso had shown so much anxiety to secure the honor, 
he never once set foot within the limits of Germany, and Richard 
contented himself with an occasional visit to the country. 



r 






^i^fi 






■mw 








Fig. 43. The Electors' Seat. (From a photograph) 

This structure stands on the banks of the Rhine near Coblenz. On the top are stone 

seats where the Electors met to elect the German king. The building shown is an 

eighteenth-century restoration 

Of course neither of the emperors-elect possessed any real 
authority in Germany or in any of the countries claimed as parts 
of the Empire. The period is known in German history as the 
Interregnum. Anarchy prevailed throughout the country. Princes 
made themselves petty despots in their dominions, while the lesser 
nobles became robbers and preyed upon traders. 

233. Towns and Free Imperial Cities. The kingly power 
having fallen into such utter contempt that all general govern- 
ment was practically in abeyance, the towns found it necessary, 
in order to protect themselves against the violence and oppres- 
sion of the princes and barons, to form confederations and take 

1 See Ancient Histoiy, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 515. 



212 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§234 

their defense in their own hands. It was during this anarchical 
period that the Hanseatic League (sect. 167) grew rapidly in 
strength and influence. 

During the course of the thirteenth century many of the towns, 
through the favor of their suzerain, were relieved of the presence 
of the imperial officers and became what are known as free 
imperial cities. They of course still acknowledged the suzerainty 
of the Emperor, but were allowed to manage their local affairs to 
suit themselves, and thus became practically little common- 
wealths, somewhat like the city-republics of Italy. 

234. Rise of the Swiss Republic. The most noteworthy mat- 
ters in German history during the fourteenth and fifteenth cen- 
turies are the struggle between the Swiss and the princes of 
the Hapsburg or Austrian family, the religious movement of th^ 
Hussites, and the growing power of the House of Hapsburg. 

Embraced within the limits of the mediaeval Empire was the 
country now known as Switzerland. Its liberty-loving people 
yielded to the Emperor a nominal obedience, like that of the 
free imperial cities; but they were very impatient of the claims 
of various feudal lords to authority over them. 

Among the lords claiming or actually possessing rights over 
different* cantons or communities were the counts of Hapsburg.^ 
The efforts of the Hapsburgs to bring the mountaineers wholly 
under their direct power led the three so-called Forest Cantons, 
Uri, Schwyz, and Unterwalden, to form a defensive union, known 
as the Everlasting Compact (1291). This league laid the basis 
of the Swiss Confederation, one of the most typical and interest- 
ing of the federal states of to-day. 

The struggle between the brave hillsmen and the House of Haps- 
burg was long and memorable.- Embellished by Swiss patriotism 

1 So called from the castle of Hapsburg, in Switzerland, the cradle of the house. In 
1273 Count Rudolph of Hapsburg was chosen Emperor. A little later he acquired 
Austria as an appanage for his house. From this new possession the family took a new 
title, — that of the House of Austria. 

2 Noteworthy battles, all victories for the Swiss, were the battle of Morgarten (1315), 
the battle of Sempach {1386), and the battle of Nafels (138S). It was at Sempach, as a 
patriotic myth relates, that Arnold of Winkelried broke the ranks of the Austrians by 
collecting in his arms as many of their lances as he could and, as they pierced his 



§235] 



LEGEND OF WILLIAM TELL 



213 



with thrilling tales of heroic daring and self-devotion, the history 
of this contest reads like a romance. But modern historical 
criticism has reduced much of the story to ordinary prose. Thus 
the tale of the hero-patriot William Tell and the tyrant Gessler 
we now know to be a myth, with nothing but the revolt as the 
nucleus of fact. Yet, as has 
been truly said, "the legend of 
William Tell, and a present- 
ment of it by Schiller [through 
heightening pride in race and 
achievement], form a national 
asset of priceless value." 

Just at the close of the 
Middle Ages (in 1499) the 
Hapsburg Emperor Maximil- 
ian I, having been defeated in a 
war with the league, concluded 
with it a treaty which practi- 
cally established the independ- 
ence of the Swiss-Confederation 
and gave it a place in the 
family of European states. 

One effect upon the Swiss of 
their long struggle for liberty 
was the fostering among them 
of such a love for the military 
life that when, at a later period, 
there was lack of warlike oc- 
cupation for them at home, the Swiss soldiers hired themselves 
out to the different sovereigns of Europe ; and thus it happened 
that, though trained in the school of freedom, these sturdy moun- 
taineers became the most noted mercenary supporters of despotism. 

235. The Hussites. About the beginning of the fifteenth cen- 
tury, through the medium of the university connections between 




Fig. 44. William Tell. (From the 
monument at Altdorf, Switzerland) 



breast, bearing them with him to the ground, exclaiming, " Comrades, I will open a 
road for you," 



214 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§236 

England and Germany, the doctrines of the English reformer 
Wycliffe began to spread in Bohemia. The chief of the new sect 
was John Huss, a professor of the University of Prague. The 
doctrines of the reformer were condemned by the great Council 
of Constance (sect. 154), and Huss himself, having been deliv- 
ered over into the hands of the civil authorities for punishment, 
was burned at the stake (141 5). The following year Jerome of 
Prague, another reformer, was likewise burned. 

Shortly after the burning of Huss a crusade was proclaimed 
against his followers, who had risen in arms. Then began a cruel, 
desolating war of fifteen years, the outcome of which was the 
almost total extermination of the radical party among the Hussites. 

236. The Imperial Crown becomes Hereditary in the House 
of Austria (1433). In the year 1438 Albert, Duke of Austria, 
was raised by the Electors to the imperial throne. His accession 
marks an epoch in German history, for, from this time on until 
the dissolution of the Empire by Napoleon in 1806, the imperial 
crown was practically hereditary in the Hapsburg family, the 
Electors, although never failing to go through the formality of an 
election, always, with one exception, choosing a person of Haps- 
burg descent. 

The greatest of the Hapsburg line during the mediaeval period 
was Maximilian I (1493-1519). The most noteworthy matter of 
his reign was the efforts made for constitutional reforms which 
should enable Germany to secure that internal peace and national 
unity which France, England, and Spain had each already in a 
fair degree attained. But every effort of this kind failed, because 
the Electors and princes would not give up any part of their 
privileges and power. 

Beginnings of German Literature 

237. The Nibelungenlied, It was during the rule of the 
Hohenstaufen that Germany produced the first pieces of a national 
literature. The Nibelungenlied, or the "Lay of the Nibelungs," is 
the great German mediaeval epic. It was reduced to writing about 



§238] MINNESINGERS AND ROMANCERS 215 

1200, being a recast of ancient German legends and lays dating 
from the sixth and seventh centuries. The hero of the story is 
Siegfried, the Achilles of Teutonic legend and song. The names 
and deeds of Attila, Theodoric, and other warriors of the age of 
the Wanderings of the Nations are mingled in its lines. 

This great national epic romance may be likened to the poem 
Beowulf of our Saxon ancestors (sect. 21). It is gross and brutal, 
filled with fierce lightings and horrible slaughters, — a reflection 
of the rude times that gave birth to the original ballads out of 
which the epic was woven; but there are also embodied in it the 
feudal virtues of loyalty and courage, while it further bears traces 
of the later softening influences of Christianity and of chivalry. 

238. The Minnesingers and Romancers. Under the same em- 
perors, during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Minne- 
singers, the poets of love, as the word signifies, flourished. They 
were the ''Troubadours of Germany."^ 

Closely connected with the lyric poetry of the Minnesingers 
is a species of chivalric romances known as court epics. The 
finest of these pieces have for their groundwork the mythic Celtic- 
French legends of the Holy Grail and the Knights of King 
Arthur's Round Table. The best representative of these romances 
is the poem of Parsifal." The moral and spiritual teaching of the 
poem is that only through humility, purity, and human sympathy 
can the soul attain perfection. 

Just at the close of the Middle Ages the humanistic studies 
(sect. 253) came to interest the scholars of Germany. The result 
was that for three hundred years thereafter much of the best 
literary work of the German scholars and writers was done in 
Latin, — the mother tongue being regarded by the later humanists 
as plebeian and fit only for inferior composition, — and thus the 
development of the native literature was seriously checked. 

1 The most eminent of the Minnesingers of the mediaeval time in Germany was 
Walther von der Vogelweide (1170-1227). 

2 By Wolfram of Eschenbach (d. about 1220). 



2i6 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§239 

V. RUSSIA 

239. The Beginnings of Russia; the Mongol Invasion. The 

state estabUshed by the Swedish adventurer Rurik (sect. 83) 
came to be known as Russia, from Ros, the name of the Scandi- 
navian settlers. The descendants of Rurik gradually extended 
their authority over neighboring tribes, until nearly all the north- 
western Slavs were included in their growing dominions. 

In the thirteenth century an overwhelming calamity befell 
Russia. This was the overrunning and concjuest of the country 
by the Mongol hordes (sect. 159). The barbarian conquerors 
inflicted the most horrible atrocities upon the unfortunate land, 
and for two hundred and fifty years held the Russian princes in 
a degrading bondage, forcing them to pay homage and tribute. 
This misfortune delayed for centuries the nationalization of the 
Slavic peoples. It was just such a misfortune as a little later befell 
the Greeks and other races of southeastern Europe (sect. 162). 

240. Russia freed from the Mongols. It was not until the 
reign of Ivan the Great (1462-1505) that Russia, — now fre- 
quently called Muscovy from the fact that it had been reorgan- 
ized with Moscow as a center, — after a terrible struggle, suc- 
ceeded in freeing itself from the hateful Tatar domination and 
began to assume the character of a well-consolidated monarchy. 
By the end of the Middle Ages Russia had become a great power, 
but she was as yet too closely hemmed in by hostile states to be 
able to make her influence felt in the affairs of Europe. 

VI. ITALY 

241. No National Government. In marked contrast to all 
those countries of which we have thus far spoken, unless we 
except Germany, Italy came to the close of the Middle Ages 
without a national or regular government. This is to be attrib- 
uted, as we have already learned, to a variety of causes, but in 
large part to that unfortunate rivalry between Pope and Emperor 
which resulted in dividing Italy into two hostile camps. 



§242] 



RIENZI, TRIBUNE OF ROME 



217 



And yet the mediaeval period did not pass without attempts on 
the part of patriot spirits to effect some sort of political union 
among the different cities and states of the peninsula. The most 
noteworthy of these movements, and one which gave assurance 
that the spark of pattiotism which was in time to flame into an 




Italy about the Middle of the Fifteenth Century 



inextinguishable passion for national unity was kindling in the 
Italian heart, was that headed by the patriot-hero Rienzi in the 
fourteenth century. 

242. Rienzi, Tribune of Rome (1347). During the greater 
part of the fourteenth century the seat of the Roman See was at 
Avignon, beyond the Alps (sect, 152). Throughout this period of 
the "Babylonian Captivity," Rome, deprived of her natural 



2i8 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§242 

guardians, was in a state of the greatest confusion. The nobles 
terrorized the country about the capital and kept the streets of 
the city itself in constant turmoil with their bitter feuds. 

In the midst of these disorders there appeared from among 
the lowest ranks of the people a deliverer in the person of one 
Nicola di Rienzi. With imagination all aflame from long study 
of the records and monuments of the freedom and the glories of 
ancient Rome, he conceived the magnificent idea of not only 
delivering the capital from the wretchedness of the prevailing 
anarchy but also of restoring the city to its former proud position 
as head of Italy and mistress of the world. 

Possessed of considerable talent and great eloquence, Rienzi 
easily incited the people to a revolt against the rule, or rathfer 
misrule, of the nobles, and succeeded in having himself, with the 
title of Tribune, placed at the head of a new government for 
Rome. The remarkable revolution drew the attention of all 
Italy and of the world beyond the peninsula as well. 

Encouraged by the success that had thus far attended his 
schemes, Rienzi now began to concert measures for the union of all 
the principalities and commonwealths of Italy into a great re- 
public, with Rome as its capital. He sent ambassadors throughout 
Italy to plead, at the courts of the princes and in the council 
chambers of the cities, the cause of Italian unity and freedom. 

The splendid dream of Rienzi was shared by other Italian 
patriots besides himself, among whom was the poet Petrarch, 
who was the friend and encourager of the plebeian tribune and 
who "wished part in the glorious work and in the lofty fame." 

But the moment for Italy's unification had not yet come. Not 
only were there hindrances to the national movement in the 
ambitions and passions of rival parties and classes, but there 
were still greater impediments in the character of the plebeian 
patriot himself. Rienzi proved to be an unworthy leader. His 
sudden elevation and surprising success completely turned his 
head, and he soon began to exhibit the most incredible vanity 
and weakness. The people withdrew from him their support; 
the Pope excommunicated him as a rebel and heretic; and the 



§243] MACHIAVELLI AND THE PRINCE 219 

nobles rose against him. He was finally killed in a sudden 
uprising of the populace (1354). Thus vanished the dream of 
Rienzi and of Petrarch, of the hero and of the poet. Centuries 
of division, of shameful subjection to foreign princes, — French, 
Spanish, and Austrian, — of wars and suffering, were yet before 
the Italian people ere Rome should become the center of a free, 
orderly, and united Italy. 

243. The Renaissance. Though the IMiddle Ages closed in 
Italy without the rise there of a national government, still before 
the end of the period much had been done to create those com- 
mon ideals and sentiments upon which political unity can alone 
securely repose. 

Literature and art here performed the part that war did in 
other countries in arousing a national pride and spirit. The 
Renaissance, of which we shall tell in the following chapter, with 
its awakenings and achievements, did much towards creating 
among the Italians a common pride in race and country; and 
thus this splendid literary and artistic enthusiasm was the first 
step in a course of national development which was to lead the 
Italian people, in the fullness of time, to a common political life. 

Here, in connection with Italian Renaissance literature, a word 
will be in place respecting The Prince, by the Florentine historian 
Machiavelli (1469-1527). In this remarkable book the writer, 
imbued with a deep patriotic sentiment, points out the way in 
which, in the midst of the existing chaos, material and spiritual, 
Italy might be consolidated into a great state, like England or 
France or Spain. 

The redeemer of Italy and the maker of the new state must be 
a strong despotic prince, who in the work must have no moral 
scruples whatever, but be ready to use all means, however unjust 
and wicked, which promised to further the end in view. 

The way in which Machiavelli instructs the prince to build up 
a state out of the broken-down institutions of the Middle Ages 
was, in truth, the very way in which the despots of his time in 
Italy had actually created their principalities; but that he should 
have seriously advised any one to adopt their immoral statecraft 



220 



GROWTH OF THE NATIONS 



[§244 



soon raised against him and his teachings, especially in the North, 
a storm of protest and denunciation which has not yet subsided. 
Machiavelli found disciples enough, however, so that his work 
had a vast though malign influence in molding the political 
morality of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 

244. Savonarola (i452-i498). A word must here be said 
respecting the Florentine monk and reformer Girolamo Savo- 
narola, who stands as the most noteworthy personage in Italy 
during the closing years of the mediaeval period. 

Savonarola was at once Roman censor 
and Hebrew prophet. His powerful 
preaching alarmed the conscience of the 
Florentines. At his suggestion the 
women brought their finery and orna- 
ments, and others their beautiful works 
of art, and, piling them in great heaps 
in the streets of Florence, burned them 
as vanities. Savonarola even urged that 
the government of Florence be made a 
theocracy and Christ be proclaimed 
king. But finally the activity of his 
.enemies brought about the reformer's 
downfall, and he was condemned to 
death, strangled, his body burned, and his ashes thrown into 
the Arno. Savonarola may be regarded as the last great mediaeval 
forerunner of the reformers of the sixteenth century. Yet he was 
not a reformer in the same sense that Luther, for instance, was. 
He was not a precursor of Protestantism. He stood firmly on 
Catholic ground. He wished, it is true, to reform the Church, but 
he had no quarrel with its doctrines or its form of government. 
His reform was a reaction against the pagan and immoral tend- 
encies of the Renaissance. He waged warfare against the human- 
ists and their heathen studies; he declared that in matters of faith 
an old woman was wiser than Plato. In like manner he opposed 
the artistic revival, which to him seemed a dangerous renewal of 
what was most immoral and debasing in the pagan past. 




Fig. 45. Sa\c)narola. (Por- 
trait by Fra Bartolommeo) 



§245] 



THE UNION OF CALM A R 



221 



VII. THE NORTHERN COUNTRIES 

245. The Union of Calmar (1397). The great Scandinavian 
Exodus of the ninth and tenth centuries drained the northern 
lands of some of the best elements of their population. For 
this reason these countries did not play as prominent a part in 
mediaeval history as they probably would otherwise have done. 




Russia and the Scandinavian Countries at the Close of the 
Middle Ages 

The constant contentions between the ungovernable nobility and 
their sovereigns were also another cause of internal weakness. 

In the year 1397, by what is known as the Union of Calmar, the 
three kingdoms of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were united 
under Margaret of Denmark, 'Hhe Semiramis of the North." The 
treaty provided that each country should retain its constitution 
and make its own laws. But the treaty was violated, and though 
the friends of the measure had hoped much from it, it brought 
only jealousies, feuds, and wars. 

Thus the history of these northern countries during the later 



2 22 GROWTH OF THE NATIONS [§245 

mediaeval time presents nothing of primary interest which calls 
for narration here; but early in the Modern Age we shall see 
Sweden developing rapidly as an independent monarchy and for 
a period playing an important part in European affairs. 

Selections from the Sources. Lanier, S., The Boy's Froissaii (being Sir 
John Froissari's Chronicles edited for boys). Aitcassin and Alcolette (trans, 
by Andrew Lang). This is the most exquisite love story, in prose and verse, 
'preserved to us from the age of the Troubadours. Henderson, E. F., Select 
Historical Documents, pp. 1-16S. Kendall, E. K., Source-Book, chaps, v-vii! 

References (Modern), (i) Works of a general character: Guizot, F. P. G., 
History of Civilization in Europe, lects. ix and xi. WiLSOX, W., The State (has 
chapters on the development of the governmental institutions of the leading 
states). Adams, G. B., Civilization during the Middle Ages, chaps, xiii and xiv. 
Emerton, E., The Beginnings of Mode7-n Europe. 

(2) National histories : Green, J. R., History of the English People, parts 
of vols, i and ii. He.xderson, E. F., Histoiy of Germany in the Middle Ages. 
Hassall, a., The French People. HUME, M. A. S., The Spanish People. The 
" Story of the Nations " series contains convenient volumes on each of the 
chief European states. 

(3) Biographies and books on special topics: Lowell, F. C,foan of Arc. 
Trevelyan, G. M., England in the Age of Wycliffe (the best account of the 
Peasants' Revolt). Poole, R. C, Wycliffe and Movements for Reform. G.\SQUET, 
F. A., The Great Pestilence. Smith, J. H., The Troubadours at Home, 2 vols. 
Mrs. Oliphant, The Makers of Florence. Le.a, H. C., A History of the Inquisi- 
tion in the Middle Ages, 3 vols. In the '" Heroes of the Nations " series are to 
be found separate biographies of many of the great characters of the period 
under review. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The Black Death : Hecker, J. F. C., The Epi- 
demics of the Middle Ages, chaps, i-vi ; Green, J. R., History of the English 
People, vol. i, pp. 428-433 (for effects of the plague in England). 2. The fall 
of Granada : Prescott, W. H., History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, 
Part I, chap, xv; or Irving, W., The Conquest of Granada. 3. Savonarola, the 
burning of the "vanities": Clark, W., Savonarola, chap. xv. 4. Introduction 
of trial by torture in the later mediaeval period : Seignobos, C, Histo?y of 
Mediceval and Modem Civilization, pp. 215-220. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

THE RENAISSANCE 

L THE BEGINNINGS OF THE RENAISSANCE 

« 

246. The Renaissance defined. By the term Renaissance 
("New Birth'"), used in its narrower sense, is meant that new 
enthusiasm for classical literature, learning, and art which sprang 
up in Italy towards the close of the Middle Ages and which 
during the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries gave 
a new culture to Europe/ • 

Using the word in a somewhat broader sense, we niay define 
the Renaissance as the reentrance into the world of that secular, 
inquiring, self-reliant spirit which characterized the life and cul- 
ture of classical antiquity. . This is simply to say that under the 
influence of the intellectual revival the men of western Europe 
came to think and feel, to look upon life and the outer world, 
as did the men of ancient Greece and Rome; and this again 
is merely to say that they ceased to think and feel as mediaeval 
men and began to think and feel as modern men. 

247, The Crusades in their Relation to the Renaissance. 
Many agencies conspired to bring in the Renaissance. Among 
these were the Crusades. These long-sustained enterprises, as 
we pointed out in summarizing their effects, contributed essentially 
to break the mental lethargy that had fallen upon the European 
mind, and to awaken in the nations of western Europe the spirit 
of a new life. Before the Crusades closed, the way of the Renais- 
sance was already prepared. In every territory of human activity 

1 By many writers the term is employed in a still narrower sense than this, 
being used to designate merely the revival of classical art ; but this is to depreciate 
the most important phase of a many-sided development. The Renaissance was 
essentially an intellectual movement. It is this intellectual quality which gives it so 
large a place in universal history and which we shall stress in our brief account of its 
principal phases. 

223 



2 24 THE RENAISS.\NCE [§248 

the paths along which advances were to be made by the men of 
coming generations had been marked out, and in many directions 
trodden by the eager feet of the pioneers of the new Hfe and 
cukure. 

248. The Development of National Literatures as an 
Expression of the New Spirit. The awakening of this new spirit 
in the Western nations is especially observable in the growth and 
development of their native literatures. It was, speaking broadly, 
during and just after the crusading centuries that the native 
tongues of Europe found a voice, — began to form literatures of 
their own. We have in another place spoken of the formation 
and gradual growth of some of the most important of these 
languages (sect. 44). As soon as their forms became somewhat 
settled, then literature was possible, and all these speeches bud 
and blossom into song and romance. In Spain the epic poem 
of the Cid, a reflection of Castilian chivalry, forms the beginning 
of Spanish literature; in the south of France the Troubadours 
fill the land with the melody of their love songs; in the north 
the Trouveurs recite the stirring romances of Charlemagne and 
his paladins, of King Arthur and the Holy Grail ; in Germany the 
harsh strains of the NibclungcnUed are followed by the softer notes 
of the Minnesingers; in Italy Dante sings his Divine Comedy 
in the pure mellifluous tongue of Tuscany and creates a language 
for the Italian race; in England Chaucer writes his Canterbury 
Tales and completes the fusion of Saxon and Norman into the 
English tongue. 

This formation of the modern European languages and the 
growth of native literatures foreshadowed the approaching 
Renaissance; for there was in them a note of freedom, a note 
of protest against mediaeval asceticism and ecclesiastical restraint. 
And at the same time that this literary development heralded the 
coming intellectual revival it hastened its advance; for the light 
songs, tales, and romances of these national literatures, unlike 
the learned productions of the Schoolmen, which were in Latin 
and addressed only to a limited class, appealed to the masses and 
thus stirred the universal mind and heart of Europe. 



§249] 



DANTE AND THE REVIVAL 



225 



249. Town Life and Lay Culture. The spirit of the new Hfe 
was nourished especially b}^ the air of the great cities. In speaking 
of mediaeval town life we noticed how within the towns there 
was early developed a life like that of modern times. The atmos- 
phere of these bustling, trafficking cities called into existence a 
practical commercial spirit, a many-sided, independent, secular life 
which in many respects 
was directly opposed to 
mediaeval teachings and 
ideals. 

This intellectual and 
social movement within 
the mediaeval towns, es- 
pecially in the great city- 
republics of Italy, was 
related most intimately, 
as we shall see in a 
moment, to that great re- 
vival of the fourteenth 
and fifteenth centuries to 
which the term Renais- 
sance is properly and dis- 
tinctively applied. 

250. Dante as a Fore- 
runner of the Renais- 
sance. We have already 
spoken the name of Dante, 
but the great place he holds in the intellectual history of the race 
requires that we should speak with some detail of the relation 
which he sustained to the age which, just as he tippeared, was 
passing away and to the new age which was then approaching. 

Dante Alighieri, "the fame of the Tuscan people," was born at 
Florence in 1265. He was^gxiled by the Florentines in 1302, and 
at the courts of friends learned how hard a thing it is "to climb 
the stairway of a patron." He died at Ravenna in 132 1, and his 
tomb there is a place of pilgrimage to-day. 




Fig. 46. Dante. (Ftom a portrait by 
S. Tofanelli) 



226 THE RENAISSANCE [§251 

It was during the years of his exile that Dante wrote his im- 
mortal poem the Commedia, as named by himself, because of its 
happy ending; the Divina Commedia, or the "Divine Comedy," 
as called by his admirers. This poem has been called the ''Epic 
of Medisevalism." It is an epitome of the life and thought of the 
Middle Ages. Dante's theology is the theology of the mediaeval 
Church; his philosophy is the philosophy of the Schoolmen; his 
science is the science of his time. 

But although Dante viewed the world from a standpoint which 
was essentially that of the mediaeval age which was passing away, 
still he was in a profound sense a prophet of the new age which 
was approaching, — a forerunner of the Renaissance. He was 
such in his feeling for classical antiquity. He speaks lovingly 
of Vergil as his teacher and master, the one from whom he took 
the beautiful style that had done him honor. His modern attitude 
towards Grseco-Roman culture is further shown in his free use 
of the works of the classical writers; the illustrative material of 
his great poem is drawn almost as largely from classical as from 
Hebrew and Christian sources. Again, in his self-reliant judg- 
ment, in his critical spirit, in his mental independence, Dante 
exhibits intellectual traits which we recognize as belonging rather 
to the modern than to the mediaeval man. 

251. The Fresh Stimulus from the Side of Classical An- 
tiquity. We have now reached the opening of the fourteenth 
century. Just at this time the intellectual progress of Europe 
received a tremendous impulse from the more perfect recovery 
of the inestimable treasures of the civilization of Grseco-Roman 
antiquity. So far-reaching and transforming was the influence of 
the old world of culture upon the nations of western Europe 
that the Renaissance, viewed as the transition from the mediaeval 
to the modern age, may properly be regarded as beginning with its 
discovery, or rediscovery, and the appropriation of its riches by the 
Italian scholars. In the following sections we shall try to give 
some account of this Renaissance movement in its earlier stages 
and as it manifested itself in Italy. 



§252] AGENCIES OF THE RENAISSANCE 227 

II. THE RENAISSANCE IN ITALY 

252. Inciting Causes of the Movement. Just as the Refor- 
mation went forth from Germany and the PoHtical Revolution 
from France, so did the Renaissance go forth from Italy. And 
this was not an accident. The Renaissance had its real beginnings 
in Italy for the reason that all those agencies which were slowly 
transforming the mediaeval into the modern world were here more 
active and effective in their workings than elsewhere. 

Foremost among these agencies must be placed the influence 
of the Italian cities. We have already seen how city life was 
more perfectly developed in Italy than in the other countries of 
western Europe. In the air of the great Italian city-republics 
there was nourished a strong, self-reliant, secular, myriad-sided 
life. It was a political, intellectual, and artistic life like that of 
the cities of ancient Greece. Florence, for example, became a 
second Athens, and in the eager air of that city individual talent 
and faculty were developed as of old in the atmosphere of the 
Attic capital. "In Florence," says Symonds, "had been pro- 
duced such glorious human beings as the world has rarely seen. 
. . . The whole population formed an aristocracy of genius." 

In a word, life in Italy earlier than elsewhere lost its mediaeval 
characteristics and assumed those of the modern type. We may 
truly say that the Renaissance was cradled in the cities of mediae- 
val Italy. The Italians, to use again the words of Symonds, were 
"the firstborn among the sons of modern Europe." 

A second circumstance that doubtless contributed to make 
Italy the birthplace of the Renaissance was the fact that in Italy 
the break between the old and the new civilization was not so 
complete as it was in the other countries of western Europe. 
The Italians were closer in language and in blood to the old 
Romans than were the other new-forming nations. They regarded 
themselves as the direct descendants and heirs of the old con- 
querors of the world. This consciousness of kinship with the men 
of a great past exerted an immense influence upon the imagination 
of the Italians and tended not only to preserve the continuity of 



228 THE RENAISSANCE [§253 

the historical development in the peninsula but also to set as the 
first task of the Italian scholars the recovery and appropriation 
of the culture of antiquity. 

But more potent than all other agencies, not so much in awak- 
ening the Italian intellect as in determining the direction of its 
activities after they were once aroused by other inciting causes, 
was the existence in the peninsula of so many monuments of the 
civilization and the grandeur of ancient Rome. The cities them- 
selves were, in a very exact sense, fragments of the old Empire; 
and everywhere in the peninsula the ground was covered with 
ruins of the old Roman builders. The influence which these 
reminders of a glorious past exerted upon sensitive souls is well 
illustrated by the biographies of such men as Rienzi and Petrarch. 

253. The Two Phases of the Italian Renaissance. It was, as 
we have already intimated, the nearness of the Italians to the 
classical past that caused the Renaissance in Italy to assume 
essentially the character of a classical revival, — a recovery and 
appropriation by the Italians of the long-neglected heritage of 
Grseco-Roman civilization. 

The movement here consisted of two distinct yet closely related 
phases, namely, the revival of classical literature and learning 
and the revival of classical art. It is with the first only, the intel- 
lectual and literary phase of the movement, that we shall be chiefly 
concerned. This feature of the movement is called distinctively 
"Humanism," and the promoters of it are known as "Human- 
ists," because of their interest in the study of the classics, the literae 
humaniores, or the "more human letters," in opposition to the 
diviner letters, that is, theology, which made up the old education. 

254. Petrarch,^ the First of the Humanists. "Not only in 
the history of Italian literature but in that of the civilized world, 
and not only in this but in the history of the human mind . . . 
Petrarch's name shines as a star of the first magnitude." It is in 
such words as these that one of the greatest historians of humanism 

1 F"ranccsco Petrarca (1304-1374). Petrarch is best known to most as the writer of 
ItaHan sonnets, but his significance for general history is due almost wholly to his 
relation to the revival of classic learning in Italy, and consequently it is only of this 
phase of his activity that we shall speak. 



§254] 



PETRARCH AND HUMANISM 



229 



speaks of Petrarch and his place in the history of the intellectual 
progress of the race. It will be worth our while to try to under- 
stand what Petrarch was in himself and what he did which justifies 
such an appraisement of his significance for universal history. 
To understand Petrarch is to understand the Renaissance. 

Petrarch was the first and greatest representative of the human- 
istic phase of the Italian Renaissance. He was the first scholar of 
the mediaeval time who 

'i\'» iV \a 1,1, , ' 



fully realized and appre- 
ciated the supreme excel- 
lence and beauty of the 
classical literature and its 
value as a means of cul- 
ture. His enthusiasm for 
the ancient writers was a 
sort of worship. At great 
cost of time and labor he 
made a collection of about 
two hundred manuscript 
volumes of the classics. 
Among his choicest Latin 
treasures were some of 
Cicero's letters, which he 
had himself discovered in 
an old library at Verona 
and reverently copied with 
his own hand. He could 
not read Greek, yet he 
gathered Greek as well as Latin manuscripts. He had sixteen 
works of Plato and a revered copy of Homer sent him from 
Constantinople; and thus, as he himself expressed it, the first of 
poets and the first of philosophers took up their abode with him. 

This last sentiment reveals Petrarch's feeling for his books. 
The spirits of their authors seemed to him to surround him in 
his quiet library, and he was never so happy as when holding 
converse with these choice souls of the past. Often he wrote 




Fig. 47. Petrarch. (From a portrait by 
S. Tofanelli) 



230 THE RENAISSANCE [§255 

letters to the old worthies, — Homer, Cicero, Vergil, Seneca, and 
the rest, — for Petrarch loved thus to record his thoughts, and 
spent much of his time in the recreation of letter writing; for 
recreation, and life itself, letter writing was to him, 

Petrarch's enthusiasm for the classical authors became conta- 
gious. Fathers reproached him for enticing their sons from the 
study of the law to the reading of the classics and the writing of 
Latin verses. But the movement started by Petrarch could not be 
checked. The impulse he imparted to humanistic studies is still 
felt in the world of letters and learning. 

255. Petrarch's Feeling for the Ruins of Rome. Petrarch 
had for the material monuments of classical antiquity a feeling 
akin to that which he had for its literary memorials. 

The men of the real mediaeval time had no intelligent curiosity 
or feeling respecting the monuments and ruins of the ancient 
world. Their attitude towards all these things was exactly the 
same as that of the modern Arabs and Turks towards the remains 
of past civilizations in the lands of the Orient. To these degen- 
erate successors of masterful races the ruins of Nineveh and Baby- 
lon are convenient brick quarries, and nothing more. They are 
absolutely indifferent respecting all that great past to which these 
vast ruins bear silent and melancholy witness. How different is 
it with us, children of the Renaissance, as we dig in those same 
mounds, carefully and reverently gathering up every fragment of 
lettered stone or brick that may tell us something of the thoughts 
and feelings and deeds of those men of the early time! 

All this illustrates perfectly the difference between the mediaeval 
man and the man of the Renaissance. During all the mediaeval 
centuries, until the dawn of the intellectual revival, the ruins of 
Rome were merely a quarry. The monuments of the Caesars 
were torn down for building material, the sculptured marbles 
were burned into lime for mortar. 

Now, Petrarch was one of the first men of mediaeval times who 
had for the ruins of Rome the modern feeling. "He tells us how 
often with Giovanni Colonna he ascended the mighty vaults of 
the Baths of Diocletian, and there in the transparent air, amid 



§256] BOCCACCIO AND THE DECAMERON 231 

the wide silence, with the broad panorama stretching far around 
them, they spoke, not of business or poHtical affairs, but of the 
history which the ruins beneath their feet suggested."^ 

256. Boccaccio, the Disciple of Petrarch. Petrarch called 
into existence a school of ardent young humanists who looked up 
to him as their master, and who carried on with unbounded en- 
thusiasm the work of exploring the new spiritual hemisphere which 
he had discovered. Most distinguished among these disciples was 
Boccaccio (13 13-1375), whose wide fame rests chiefly on his 
Decameron, a collection of tales written in Italian, but whose work 
as a humanist alone has interest for us in the present connection. 

Boccaccio did much to spread and to deepen the enthusiasm 
for antiquity that Petrarch had awakened. He industriously col- 
lected and copied ancient manuscripts and thus greatly promoted 
classical scholarship in Italy. Imitating Petrarch, he tried to 
learn Greek, but, like Petrarch, made very little progress towards 
the mastery of the language because of the incompetence of his 
teacher and also because of the utter lack of textbooks, gram- 
mars, and dictionaries. He persuaded his teacher, however, to 
make a Latin translation of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and was 
thus instrumental in giving to the world the first modern trans- 
lation of Homer. It was a wretched version, yet it served to 
inspire in the Italian scholars an intense desire to know at first 
hand Greek literature, — that literature from which the old Roman 
authors had admittedly drawn their inspiration. 

257, The Italians are taught Greek by Chrysoloras. This 
desire of the Italian scholars was soon gratified. Just at the close 
of the fourteenth century the Eastern Emperor sent an embassy 

1 Burckhardt, The CivUizaiion of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 177. Petrarch repre- 
sents still other phases and qualities of the modern spirit, upon which, however, 
it is impossible for us to dwell. Regarding his feeling for nature in her grand 
and romantic aspects, we must nevertheless say a single word. One of the most 
remarkable passages in his writings is his description of his ascent of Mount 
Ventoux, near Avignon, for the sake of the view from the top. This was the beginning 
of the mountain climbing of modern times, — a new thing in the world. There was 
very little of it in antiquity, and during the Middle Ages apparently none at all. 
Even Dante always speaks of the mountains with a shudder. Nothing distinguishes 
the modern from the mediaeval man more sharply than this new feeling for nature 
in her wilder and grander moods. 



232 THE RENAISSANCE [§258 

to Italy to beg aid against the Turks. The commission was 
headed by Manuel Chrysoloras, an eminent Greek scholar. No 
sooner had he landed at Venice than the Florentines sent him a 
pressing invitation to come to their city. He acceded to their 
request, was received by them with such honor as they might 
have shown a celestial being, and was given a professor's chair 
in the university (1396). Young and old thronged his classroom. 
Men past sixty "felt the blood leap in their veins" at the thought 
of being able to learn Greek. 

The appearance of Chrysoloras as a teacher at Florence marks 
the revival, after seven centuries of neglect, of the study of the 
Greek language and literature in the schools of western Europe. 
This meant much. It meant the revival of civilization, the opening 
of the modern age; for of all the agencies concerned in trans- 
forming the mediseval into the modern world one of the most 
potent certainly was Greek culture.^ 

258, The Search for Old Manuscripts. Having now spoken 
of the pioneers of Italian humanism in the fourteenth century, we 
can, in our remaining space, touch only in a very general way 
upon the most important phases of the humanistic movement in 
the following century. 

The first concern of the Italian scholars was to rescue from 
threatened oblivion what yet remained of the ancient classics. 
Just as the antiquarians of to-day dig over the mounds of Assyria 
for relics of the ancient civilization of the East, so did the 
humanists ransack the libraries of the monasteries and cathedrals 
and search through all the out-of-the-way places of Europe for 
old manuscripts of the classic writers. 

The precious manuscripts were often discovered in a shameful 
state of neglect and in advanced stages of decay. Sometimes 
they were found covered with mold in damp cells or loaded with 
dust in the attics of monasteries. Again they were discovered, as 

1 If it be true [as has been asserted] that except the blind forces of nature 
nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin, we are justified in re- 
garding the point of contact between the Cireek teacher Chrysoloras and his Flor- 
entine pupils as one of the most momentous crises in the history of civilization. — 
Symonds 



§259] PATRONS OF THE NEW LEARNING 233 

by Boccaccio in the manuscript room of the Benedictine mon- 
astery of Monte Cassino, mutilated in various ways, some, for 
instance, with the borders of the parchment pared away, and 
others with whole leaves lacking/ 

This late search of the humanists for the works of the ancient 
authors saved to the world many precious manuscripts which, a 
little longer neglected, would have been forever lost. 

259. Patrons of the New Learning; the Founding of 
Libraries. This gathering and copying of the ancjent manuscripts 
was costly in time and labor. But there was many a Maecenas to 
encourage and further the work. Prominent among these promot- 
ers of the New Learning, as it was called, were Cosimo and 
Lorenzo de' Medici at Florence. It was largely due to their 
genuine and enlightened interest in the great undertaking of 
recovering for culture the ancient classical literatures that 
Florence became the foster home of the intellectual and literary 
revival. 

Among the papal promoters of the movement Pope Nicholas V 
(1447-1455) was one of the most noted. He sent out explorers 
to all parts of the West to search for manuscripts, and kept busy 
at Rome a multitude of copyists and translators. A little later 
Pope Julius II (1503-15 13) and Pope Leo X (1513-1521) made 
Rome a brilliant center of Renaissance art and learning. 

Libraries were founded where the new treasures might be safely 
stored and made accessible to scholars. In this movement some 
of the largest libraries of Italy had their beginnings. At Florence 
the Medici established the fine existing INIedicean Library. At 
Rome Pope Nicholas V enriched the original papal collection of 
books by the addition, it is said, of fully five thousand manu- 
scripts, and thus became the real founder of the celebrated 
Vatican Library of the present day. 

1 This mutilation was due chiefly to the scarcity of writing material, which led 
the mediaeval copyists to erase the original text of old parchments that they might 
use them a second time. In this way many works of classical authors were destroyed. 
Sometimes, however, the earlier text was so imperfectly obliterated that by means of 
chemical reagents it can be wholly or partially restored. Such twice-written manuscripts 
are called palimpsests. 



234 



THE RENAISSANCE 



[§260 



260. How the Fall of Constantinople aided the Revival. 

The humanistic movement, especially in so far as it concerned 
Greek letters and learning, was given a great impulse by the dis- 
asters which in the fifteenth century befell the Eastern Empire. 
Constantinople, it will be recalled, was captured by the Ottoman 
Turks in 1453. But for a half century before that event the 

threatening advance of the 



barbarians had caused a 
great migration of Greek 
scholars to the West. So 
many of the exiles sought an 
asylum in Italy that one 
could say: "Greece has not 
fallen; she has migrated to 
Italy, which in ancient times 
bore the name of Magna 
Graecia." 

These fugitives brought 
with them many valuable 
manuscripts of the ancient 
Greek classics still unknown 
to Western scholars. The 
enthusiasm of the Italians 
for everything Greek led to 
the appointment of many of 
the exiles as teachers and 
lecturers in their schools and 




Fig. 48. A Block-Printed Page 

FROM THE " BiBLIA PaUPERUM " 

(From Lacroix) 



universities. Thus there was now a repetition of what took place 
at Rome in the days of the later republic; Italy was conquered 
a second time by the genius of Greece. 

261. The Invention of Printing. During the latter part of the 
fifteenth century the work of the Italian humanists was greatly 
furthered by the happy and timely invention of the art of print- 
ing from movable letters, the most important discovery, in the 
estimation of the historian Hallam, recorded in the annals of 
mankind. 



§261] 



THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 



235 



The making of impressions by means of engraved seals or 
blocks seems to be a device as old as civilization. The Chinese 
have practiced this form of printing from an early time. The art 
appears to have sprung up independently in Europe during the 
later mediaeval period. First, devices on playing cards were formed 
by impressions from blocks; then manuscripts were stamped with 
portraits and pictures. The next step was to cut into the same 
block a few lines of explanatory text. In time the lines increased 




Fig. 49. The Printing of Books. (From Early Venetian Printing) 

to pages, and during the first half of the fifteenth century many 
entire books were produced by the block-printing method. 

But printing from blocks was slow and costly. The art was 
revolutionized by John Gutenberg (1400-1468), a native of Mainz 
in Germany, through the invention of the movable letters which we 
call type.^ The oldest book known to have been printed from 
movable letters was a Latin copy of the Bible issued from the 
press of Gutenberg and Faust at Mainz between the years 1454 and 



1 Some Dutch writers claim for Coster of Haarlem the honor of the invention, but 
there is nothinar aside from unreliable tradition on which such a claim can rest. 



236 



THE RENAISSANCE 



[§262 




i; iff! 1111:1 



1456. The art spread rapidly and before the dose of the fifteenth 
century presses were busy in every country of Europe — in the 
city of Venice alone there were two hundred — multiplying books 
with a rapidity undreamed of by the patient copyists of the 

cloister. 

The most celebrated of 
the early printing houses 
was that established at 
Venice by Aldus Manu- 
tius (1450-1515) and 
known as the Aldine 
Press. In the course of 
a few years Aldus gave to 
the appreciative scholars 
of Europe an almost com- 
plete series of the Greek 
authors and many Latin 
and Hebrew texts. Al- 
together he printed over 
a hundred works. In 
quality of paper and in 
clearness and beauty of 
type his editions have 
never been surpassed. 

The work of the Aldine 
Press at Venice, in con- 
nection of course with 
what was done by presses 



h^^"-^ ^>^^^'' 



IM f 




'\i i^rtH^^H^ls^^ b 



Fig. 50. Case of Chained Books. (From 
Clarke, T/ie Care of Books) 

The case shown is preserved in the Chapter Library, 

Hertford, England. In some Hbraries this practice 

of chaining the books was kept up even in the 

eighteenth century 



of less note in other places, made complete the recovery of the 
classical literatures, and by scattering broadcast throughout Eu- 
rope the works of the ancient authors rendered it impossible that 
any part of them should ever again become lost to the world. 

262. Humanism crosses the Alps. As early as the middle of 
the fifteenth century the German youths had begun to cross the 
Alps in order to study Greek at the feet of the masters there. As 
the type and representative of these young German humanists we 



§'263] THE ARTISTIC REVIVAL 237 

may name Reuchlin, who in 1482 journeyed to Italy and presented 
himself there before a celebrated teacher of Greek. As a test of'his 
knowledge of the language he was given a passage from Thucydi- 
des to translate. The young barbarian — for by this term the 
Italians of that time expressed their contempt for an inhabitant 
of the rude North — turned the lines so easily and masterfully 
that the examiner, who was a native-born Greek, cried out in 
admiration and astonishment, "Our exiled Greece has flown 
beyond the Alps." 

In transalpine Europe the^humanistic movement became blended 
with other tendencies. In Italy it had been an almost exclusive 
devotion to Greek and Latin letters and learning; but in the 
North there was added to this enthusiasm for classical culture an 
equal and indeed supreme interest in Hebrew and Christian 
antiquity. Hence here the literary and intellectual revival be- 
came, in the profoundest sense, the moving cause of the great 
religious revolution known as the Reformation, and it is in con- 
nection with the beginnings of that movement that we shall find 
a place to speak of the humanists of Germany and the other 
northern lands. 

263. The Artistic Revival. As we have already seen, the 
new feeling for classical antiquity awakened among the Italians 
embraced not simply the literary and philosophical side of the 
Graeco-Roman culture but the artistic side as well. Respecting 
this latter phase of the Italian Renaissance it will be impossible 
for us to speak in detail, nor is it necessary for us to do so, since 
the chief significance of the Renaissance for universal history, as 
already noted, is to be sought in the purely intellectual movement 
traced in the preceding pages of this chapter. 

The artistic revival in so far as it concerned sculpture and paint- 
ing was in its essence a return of art to nature ; for mediaeval 
art lacked freedom and naturalness. The artist was hampered by 
ecclesiastical tradition and restraint; he was, moreover, under the 
influence of the religious asceticism of the time. His models as 
a rule were the stiff, angular, lifeless forms of Byzantine art or the 
gaunt, pinched bodies of saints and anchorites. In the decoration 



238 



THE RENAISSANCE 



[§264 



of the walls, pulpits, and altars of the churches he was not at 
liberty, even if he had the impulse, to depart from the consecrated 
traditional types.^ 

Now, what the Renaissance did for art was to liberate it from 
these trammels and to breathe into its dead forms the spirit of 
that new life which was everywhere awakening. This emancipa- 
tion movement took place largely under impulses which came 
from a study of the masterpieces of ancient art. Thus did classical 
antiquity exercise the same influence in the emancipation and 

revival of art as in 
the emancipation and 
revival of letters. 

264. Renaissance 
Architecture. Under 
the iniluence of the 
revival, architecture 
also underwent trans- 
formation, regarding 
which a word must 
be said before we pro- 
ceed to name the most 
eminent of the Italian 
Renaissance sculptors 
and painters. In ar- 
chitecture it was the 
old Greek and Roman 
styles of building which were revived. The Roman dome and 
circular arch, and the Greek architrave, or the horizontal beam 
covering.columns, windows, and doors, now took the place of the 
Gothic pointed arch (sect 174) and became the dominant forms. 
But it was not the pure classical orders that reappeared, for the 
builders of the Renaissance often combined with classical forms 
certain Gothic elements, such as spires and towers. One of the 




Fig. 51. Tomb at Tours of the Children 
OF Charles VIII. (From a photograph) 

Showing the influence of ancient classical art upon the 
art of the Renaissance 



1 In the Greek Church at the present time the artist in the portrayal of sacred 
subjects is not permitted to change the traditional expression or attitude of his 
figures. 



§265] ITALIAN RENAISSANCE PAINTING 239 

most impressive of Renaissance sacred buildings is St. Peter's at 
Rome.^ The great dome which crowns the building was the work 
of Michael Angelo. 

265. Why Painting was the Supreme Art of the Italian 
Renaissance." The artistic revival in Italy produced many emi- 
nent sculptors,- but the characteristic art of the Italian Renais- 
sance was painting, and for the reason that it best expresses the 
ideas and sentiments of Christianity. The art that would be 
the handmaid of the Church needed to be able to represent faith 
and hope, ecstasy and suffering, — none of which things can well 
be expressed by sculpture, which is essentially the art of repose. 

Sculpture was the chief art of the Greeks because the aim of 
the Greek artist was to represent physical beauty or strength. 
But the problem of the Christian artist is to express spiritual 
emotion through the medium of the body. This cannot be repre- 
sented in cold, colorless marble. Thus, as Symonds asks, "How 
could the Last Judgment be expressed in plastic form?" The chief 
events of Christ's life removed him beyond the reach of sculpture. 

Therefore, because sculpture has so little power to express 
emotion, painting, which runs so easily the entire gamut of feel- 
ing, became the chosen medium of expression of the Italian artist. 
This art alone enabled him to portray the raptures of the saint, 
the sweet charm of the Madonna, the intense passion of the 
Christ, the moving terrors of the Last Judgment. 

266. The Four Masters; Mingling of Christian and Classical 
Subjects. The four supreme masters of Italian Renaissance 
painting were Leonardo da Vinci ^ (1452-1519), whose masterpiece 

1 Begun in 1506 and finished in 1626. Otlier important examples of Renaissance 
architecture are St. Paul's Cathedral in London, the Louvre in Paris, and the Escorial 
in Spain. 

2 The views presented in this paragraph are those of Symonds in his work on The 
Fine Arts, which forms the third volume of his Renaissance in Italy. 

3 In the list of Italian sculptors the following names are especially noteworthy: 
Ghiberti (137S-1435), whose genius is shown in his celebrated bronze gates of the 
Baptistery at Florence, of which Michael Angelo said that they were worthy to be 
the gates of Paradise; Brunelleschi (1377-1444), Donatello (1386-1466), and Michael 
Angelo (1475-1564). 

4 Leonardo da Vinci was, in his many-sidedness and versatility, a true child of the 
Italian Renaissance ; he was at once painter, sculptor, architect, poet, musician, and scientist. 



2 40 



THE RENAISSANCE 



[§267 



is his Last Supper, on the wall of a convent in Milan; 
Raphael (1483-1 520), the best beloved of artists, whose Madonnas 
are counted among the world's treasures; Michael Angelo^ (1472- 
1564), whose best paintings are his wonderful frescoes, among 
them the Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel at Rome; and 
Titian (1477-1576), the Venetian master, celebrated for his 
portraits, which have preserved for us in flesh and blood, so to 
speak, many of the most noteworthy personages of his time.- 

The earlier Italian painters drew 
their subjects chiefly from Christian 
sources. They literally covered the 
walls of the churches, palaces, and 
civic buildings of Italy with pictorial 
representations of all the ideas and 
imaginings of the mediaeval ages 
respecting death, the judgment, 
heaven, and hell. As Symonds 
tersely expresses it, . they did by 
means of pictures what Dante had 
done by means of poetry. 

The later artists, more under the 
influence of the classical revival, 
mingled freely pagan and Christian 
subjects and motives, and thus became truer representatives than 
their predecessors of the Renaissance movement, one important 
issue of which was to be the reconciliation and blending of pagan 
and Christian culture. 

267. The Paganism of the Italian Renaissance. There was a 
religious and moral or, to speak more accurately, an irreligious 
and immoral side to the classical revival in Italy which cannot be 

1 Michael Angelo, as we have seen, was an architect and sculptor as well as 
a painter. He is the only modern sculptor who can be given a place alongside the 
greatest sculptors of ancient Greece. 

2 A longer list of the most eminent Italian painters would include at least the 
following names: Cimabue (about 1240-1302) and Giotto (1276-13;,;), precursors 
of the revival; Fra Angelico (1387-1455) ; Correggio (about 1494-1534) ; Tintoretto 
(15 18-1594) ^nd Veronese (about 1530-15SS), representatives of the Renaissance 
proper. 




Fig. 52. Raphael 



§268] EFFECTS OF THE RENAISSANCE 241 

passed wholly unnoticed even in so brief an account of the move- 
ment as the present sketch. In the first place, the study of the 
pagan poets and philosophers produced the exact result predicted 
by a certain party in the Church. It proved hurtful to religious 
faith. Men became pagans in their feelings and in their way 
of thinking. Italian scholars and Italian society almost ceased 
to be Christian in any true sense of the word. 

With the New Learning came also those vices and immoralities 
that characterized the decline of classical civilization. Italy was 
corrupted by the new influences that flowed in upon her, just as 
Rome was corrupted by Grecian luxury and sensuality in the days 
of the failing republic. Much of the literature of the time is even 
more grossly immoral in tone than the literature of the age of 
classical decadence. 

III. GENERAL EFFECTS OF THE RENAISSANCE 

268. The Renaissance brought in New Conceptions of Life 
and the World. The Renaissance effected in the Christian West 
an intellectual and moral revolution so profound and so far- 
reaching in its consequences that it may well be likened to that 
produced in the ancient world by the incoming of Christianity. The 
New Learning was indeed a New Gospel: Like Christianity, the 
Renaissance revealed to men another world, another state of 
existence; for such was the real significance, to the men of the 
revival, of the discovery of the civilization of classical antiquity. 
Through this discovery they learned that this earthly life is worth 
living for its own sake; that this life and its pleasures need not 
be contemned and sacrificed in order to make sure of eternal life in 
another world; and that man may think and investigate and satisfy 
his thirst to know without endangering the everlasting welfare of 
his soul.^ 

1 The longings and the superstitious fears of men in the age of transition between 
mediaeval and modern times is well epitomized in the tradition of Dr. Faustus. 
" That legend," says Symonds, " tells us what the men upon the eve of the Revival 
longed for, and what they dreaded, when they turned their minds toward the past. 
The secret of enjoyment and the source of strength possessed by the ancients allured 
them : but they believed that they could only recover this lost treasure by the suicide 



242 THE RENAISSANCE [§269 

These discoveries made by the men of the Renaissance gave a 
vast impulse to the progress of the human race. They inspired 
humanity with a new spirit, a spirit destined in time to make 
things new in all realms, — in the realm of religion, of politics, of 
literature, of art, of science, of invention, of industry. Some of 
these changes and revolutions we shall briefly indicate in the 
remaining sections of the present chapter. To follow them out 
more in detail in all the territories of human activity and 
achievement will be our special aim in later chapters, where we 
propose to trace the course of the historical development through 
the centuries of the Modern Age, — the great age opened by the 
Renaissance. 

269. It restored the Broken Unity of History. When Chris- 
tianity entered the ancient Graeco-Roman world war declared 
itself at once between the new religion and classical culture, 
especially between it and Hellenism. The Church, soon trium- 
phant over paganism, rejected the bequest of anticiuity. Some 
of the elements of that heritage were, it is true, appropriated by 
the men of the mediaeval time and thus came to enrich the new 
Christian culture; but, as a whole, it was cast aside as pagan, and 
neglected. Thus was the unity of the historical development 
broken. 

Now, through the liberal tendencies and generous enthusiasms 
of the Renaissance there was effected a reco;iciliation between 
Christianity and classical civilization. There took place a fusion 
of their qualities and elements. The broken unity of history was 
restored. The cleft between the ancient and the modern world 
was closed. The severed branch was reunited to the old trunk. 

of the soul. So great was the temptation that Faustus paid the price. After imbibing 
all the knowledge of the age, he sold himself to the devil, in order that his thirst 
for experience might be quenched, his grasp upon the world be strengthened, and 
the ennui of his activity be soothed. His first use of his dearly-bought power was 
to make blind Homer sing to him. Amphion tunes his harp in concert with 
Mephistopheles. Alexander rises from the dead at his behest, with all his legionaries; 
and Helen is given to him for a bride. Faustus is therefore a parable of the impotent 
yearnings of the spirit in the Middle Ages, — its passionate aspiration, its conscience- 
stricken desire, its fettered curiosity amid the cramping limits of impotent knowledge 
and irrational dogmatisms." — Revival of Learning, P- 53 (^d. iSSS) 



§270] HUMANISM AND EDUCATION 243 

The importance for universal history of this restoration of its 
broken unity, of this recovery by the Modern Age of the long- 
neglected culture of antiquity, can hardly be overestimated; for 
that culture had in its keeping not only the best the human race 
had thought and felt in the period of the highest reach of its 
powers but also the precious scientific stores accumulated by all 
the ancient peoples. What the recovery and appropriation of all 
this meant for the world is suggested by ex-President Woolsey in 
these words: "The old civilization contained treasures of perma- 
nent value which the world could not spare, which the world will 
never be able or willing to spare. These were taken up into the 
stream of life, and proved true aids to the progress of a culture 
which is gathering in one the beauty and truth of all the ages." 

270. It reformed Education. The humanistic revival revolu- 
tionized education. During the Middle Ages the Latin language 
had degenerated, for the most part, into a barbarous jargon, 
while the Greek had been practically forgotten and the Aristotelian 
philosophy perverted. As to Plato, he was virtually unknown to 
the mediaeval thinkers. Now humanism restored to the world 
the pure classical Latin, rediscovered the Greek language, and 
recovered for civilization the once-rejected heritage of the ancient 
classics, including the Platonic philosophy, which was to be a 
quickening and uplifting force in modern thought. 

The' schools and universities did not escape the influences of 
this humanistic revival. Chairs in both the Greek and Latin lan- 
guages and literatures were now established, not only in the new 
universities which arose under the inspiration of the New Learn- 
ing but also in the old ones. The scholastic method of instruc- 
tion, of which we spoke in a preceding chapter, was gradually 
superseded by this so-called classical system of education, which 
dominated the schools and universities of the world down to the 
incoming of the scientific studies of the present day. 

271. It aided the Development of the Native Literatures. 
The classical revival gave to the world the treasures of two great 
literatures. And in giving to the scholars of Europe the master- 
pieces of the ancient authors, it gave to them, besides much 



244 THE RENAISSANCE [§272 

fresh material, the most faultless models of literary taste and 
judgment that the world has ever produced. The influence of 
these in correcting the extravagances of the mediaeval imagina- 
tion and in creating correct literary ideals can be distinctly traced 
in the native literatures of Italy, France, Spain, and England. 

It is sometimes maintained, indeed, that the attention given to 
the ancient classics, and the preferred use by so many authors 
during the later mediaeval and the earlier modern period of the 
Latin as a literary language,' retarded the normal development 
of the native literatures of the European peoples. As to Italy, 
it is true that the national literature which had started into 
life with such promise with Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio was 
for almost a century neglected; but in transalpine Europe, apart 
from Germany, where for a period Latin did almost supplant the 
vernacular, the revived study of the classics did not produce the 
disastrous effects observed in Italy. On the contrary, as we have 
just said, the effect of humanism upon the great literatures of 
Europe, aside from the exceptions noticed, was to enrich, to 
chasten, and to refine them. 

272. It called into Existence the Sciences of Archaeology 
and Historical Criticism. Many sciences were in germ in the 
Renaissance. As to the science of archaeology, which possesses such 
a special interest for the historical student, it may be truly said 
that it had its birth in the classical revival. We have already 
noticed the new feeling for the remains of antiquity that stirred 
in the souls of the men of the Renaissance (sect. 255). 

The ruins of Rome were naturally the first object of the curiosity 
and archaeological zeal of the Italian scholars. From the fifteenth 
century down to the present day the interest in the monuments 
and relics of past civilizations has steadily increased and has led to 
remarkable discoveries, not only on classical ground but also in 
Assyrian and Egyptian territories, — discoveries which, by carrying 
the story of the human race back into a past immensely remote, 
have given an entirely new beginning to history. 

1 Some of the very best literary work of the period was done in Latin, as witness 
the Colloquies by Erasmus and the Utopia by More. 



§273] THE REVIVAL AND RELIGIOUS REFORM 245 

What is true of the science of archaeology is equally true of the 
science of historical criticism. We have seen that the spirit which 
awoke in the Renaissance was a questioning, critical spirit, one 
very different from the credulous mediaeval spirit, which was 
ready to accept any picturesque tradition or marvelous tale with- 
out inquiry as to its source or credibility. Here began that critical 
sifting and valuation of our historical sources which has resulted 
in the discrediting of a thousand myths and legends once regarded 
as unimpeachable historical material, and in the consequent recon- 
struction of oriental, classical, and mediaeval history. 

The true founder of the science of historical criticism was 
Laurentius Valla (1407-1457). His greatest achievement as a 
critic was the demonstration, on philological and historical grounds, 
of the unauthentic character of the celebrated Donation of Con- 
stantine.^ He also called in question the authority of Livy and 
proved the spurious character of the alleged correspondence be- 
tween Seneca and the Apostle Paul. The achievements of Valla 
ushered in the day of historical criticism. 

273. It gave an Impulse to Religious Reform. The human- 
istic movement, as we have already noticed, when it crossed the 
Alps assumed among the northern peoples a new character. It was 
the Hebrew past rather than the Graeco-Roman past which stirred 
the interest of the scholars of the North. The Bible, which the 
printing presses were now multiplying in the original Hebrew and 
Greek as well as in the vernacular languages, became the subject 
of enthusiastic study and of fresh interpretation. Consequently 
what was in the South a restoration of classical literature and art 
became in the more serious and less sensuous North a revival of 
primitive Christianity, of the ethical and religious elements of the 
Hebrew-Christian past. The humanist became the reformer. 
Reuchlin, Erasmus, and the other humanists of the North were 
the true precursors of the great religious revolution of the six- 
teenth century. 

There were certain principles and qualities in humanism which 
made inevitable this transformation of the revival in its passage 

1 See p. 32, n. 2. 



246 ' THE RENAISSANCE [§273 

from the South to the North. In the first place, the principle of 
free inquiry in humanism was bound to come into collision with 
the principle of ecclesiastical authority. It was this tendency 
in humanism which at last awakened the fears of the papal court 
and set it in opposition to the entire intellectual movement of which 
in its earlier stages it had been a most zealous promoter. 

In the second place, there was in the humanists a spirit of self- 
reliance in religious matters which was a foreshadowing of the 
coming individualism of the Reformation. Writing to his brother, 
who in his letters was accustomed to make many citations from 
the Church Fathers, Petrarch says: "You would do well to trust, 
for a time at least, more to your own powers, nor be afraid that 
the same spirit which made the Fathers wise will not aid you." 
This is a note of the Protestant Revolution. 

Selections from the Sources. Robinson, J. 11., and Rolfe, H. W., Petrarch 
(selections from Petrarcli's " correspondence with Boccaccio and other 
friends "). Whitcomb, ^l., Source-Book of the Renaissance, Part I. The Book of 
the Coiuiier (the Tudor Translations). This book is one of the most char- 
acteristic products of the Itahan Renaissance. It was translated into all the 
chief European languages and exerted a vast influence upon life and manners 
everywhere, and especially in England. "There is not the slightest reason for 
doubting," says Professor Saintsbury, " that Sidney himself had the Courtier 
and its ideal constantly before him." 

References (Modern). The literature on the Renaissance is very extensive ; 
we shall suggest only a few titles. Symonds, J. A., The Renaissance in Italy, 
7 vols, (the best extended history in English). Burckhardt, J., The Civiliza- 
tion of the Renaissance in Italy (philosophical and suggestive). Field, L. F., 
An Introduction to the Study of the Renaissance. Mrs. Oliphant, Makers of 
Florence and Makers of Venice. Adams, G. E., Civilizatio7i during the Middle 
Ages, chap. xv. Emerton, E., The Beginnings of Modem Europe, chap. ix. 
Grimm, H., The Life of Michael Angelo, 2 vols. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The mediaeval feeling for nature : McLaughlin, 
E. T., Studies in Mediceval Life and Literature, pp. 1-33. 2. Petrarch's ascent 
of Mount Ventoux : Robinson, J. H., and Rolfe, H; W., Petrarch, pp. 307-320. 
3. Dante and his Divine Comedy: Lowell, J. R., Among my Books (Second 
Series), pp. 1-26. 4. The new feeling for the ruins of Rome: Burckhardt, J., 
Ihe Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, pp. 1 77-186; Symonds, J. A., The 
Revival of Learning, pp. 142-157. 5. Aldus Manutius and the Aldine Press: 
Putnam, J. H., Books and their Makers, vol. i, pp. 417-440. 



PART II — THE MODERN AGE 

THIRD PERIOD — THE ERA OF THE 
REFORMATION 

(From the Discovery of America, in 1492, to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648) 

CHAPTER XIX 

GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES AND THE BEGINNINGS OF 
MODERN COLONIZATION 

274. Transition from the Mediaeval to the Modern Age. 

The discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492, is often used 
to mark the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of modern 
times; and this was an event of such transcendent importance — 
the effect upon civilization of the opening up of fresh continents 
was so great — that we may very properly accord to the achieve- 
ment of the Genoese the honor proposed. Yet we must bear in 
mind that no single circumstance or event actually marks the end 
of the old order of things and the beginning of the new. The 
finding of the New World did not make the new age; the new 
age discovered the New World. The undertaking of Columbus 
was the natural outcome of that spirit of commercial enterprise 
and scientific curiosity which for centuries — ever since the Cru- 
sades — had been gradually expanding the scope of mercantile 
adventure and broadening the horizon of the European world. 
His fortunate expedition was only one of several brilliant nautical 
exploits which distinguished the close of the fifteenth and the 
opening of the sixteenth century. 

This same period was also marked by significant intellectual, 
political, and religious movements, which indicated that civiliza- 
tion was about to enter — indeed, had already entered — upon a 
new phase of its development. 

247 



248 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§ 274 

In the intellectual world, as we have seen, was going on the 
wonderful Revival of Learning, producing everywhere unwonted 
thought, stir, and enterprise/ This intellectual movement alone 
would suffice to mark the period of which we speak as the begin- 
ning of a new era; for the opening and the closing of the great 
epochs of history, such as the Age of Christianity, the Age of the 
Protestant Reformation, and the Age of the Political Revolution, 
are determined not by events or happenings in the outer world 
but by movements within the soul of humanity. 

In the political world the tendency to centralization which had 
long been at work in different countries of Europe, gathering up 
the little feudal units into larger aggregates, was culminating in 
the formation of great independent nations with strong monar- 
chical governments. The Age of the Nations was opening. This 
movement was one of vast significance in European history and 
might in itself very well be regarded as forming a division line 
between two great epochs. 

In the religious world there were unrest, dissatisfaction, inquiry, 
complaint, — premonitory symptoms of the tremendous revolution 
that was destined to render the sixteenth century memorable in 
the religious records of mankind. This upheaval also constitutes 
a sort of continental divide in history. 

Closely connected with these movements were three great 
inventions which, like the inventions of our own time, were also 
signs of a new age, and which powerfully helped on the mental 
and social revolutions. Thus the intellectual revival and the 

1 The truest representative of the intellectual revival on its scientific side was 
Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543), who, while Columbus and others were exploring 
the earth's unknown seas and opening up a new hemisphere for civilization, was 
exploring the heavens and discovering the true system of the universe. He had 
fully matured his theory by the year 1507, but fearing the charge of heresy he did 
not publish the great work embodying his view until thirty-six years later (in 1543). 
It should be carefully noted, however, that the Copernican theory had little influence 
on the thought of the sixteenth century. It was denounced as contrary to Scripture 
by both Catholics and Protestants, and was almost universally rejected for more 
than a hundred years after its first publication. Even after the revelations made by 
the telescope of Galileo (i 564-1642) the acceptance of the truth was so hindered 
by theological opposition that the complete triumph of the doctrine was delayed 
until the eighteenth century. See Andrew D. White, The Warfare of Science with 
Theology, vol. i, chap. iii. 



§275] 



MARITIME EXPLORATIONS 



249 



religious reform were greatly promoted by the new art of printing ; 
the kings in their struggle with the nobles were materially aided by 
the use of gunpowder, which rendered useless costly armor and 
fortified castle and helped to replace the feudal levy by a regular 
standing army, the prop and bulwark of the royal power; while 
the great ocean voyages of the times were 
rendered possible only by the improvement 
of the mariner's compass,^ whose trusty 
guidance emboldened the navigator to quit 
the shore and push out upon hitherto un- 
traversed seas. 

275. Maritime Explorations; the Terrors 
of the Ocean. To appreciate the greatness 
of the achievements of the navigators and 
explorers of the age of geographical dis- 
covery, we need to bear in mind with what 
terrors the mediaeval imagination had in- 
vested the unknown regions of the earth. 
In the popular conception these parts were 
haunted by demons and dragons and mon- 
sters of every kind. The lands were shrouded 
in eternal mists and darkness. The seas were 
filled with awful whirlpools and treacherous 
currents, and shallowed into vast marshes. 
Out in the Atlantic, so a popular superstition 
taught, was the mouth of hell; the red 
glow cast upon the sun at its setting was held to be positive 
evidence of this. Away to the south, under the equator, there was 
believed to be an impassable belt of fire. This was a very per- 
sistent idea, and was not dispelled until men had actually sailed 
beyond the equatorial regions. 




Fig. S3. A Chinese 

Magnet Figure 

(After Beazley) 

A rude form of the com- 
pass used by early Chi- 
nese sailors. The little 
wooden figure was set on 
a pivot, and in the out- 
stretched arm was placed 
a bar of magnetized iron 



1 It is a disputed question as to what people should be given the credit of the 
discovery of the properties of the magnetic needle. In a very primitive form the com- 
pass was certainly in use among the Chinese as early as the eighth century of our era. 
There il" no reliable record of its use by European navigators before about the middle 
of the thirteenth century. It seems most probable that a knowledge of the instrument 
was gained in the East by the crusaders. 



2 50 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§276 

276. Portuguese Explorations; Prince Henry the Navigator. 
Many incentives concurred to urge daring navigators in the later 
mediaeval time to undertake voyages of discovery, but a chief 
motive was a desire to find a water way that should serve as a 
new trade route between Europe and the Indies. 

The first attempts to reach these lands by an all-sea route 
were made by sailors feeling their way down the western coast of 
the African continent. The favorable situation of Portugal upon 
the Atlantic seaboard caused her to become foremost in these 
enterprises. Throughout the fifteenth century Portuguese sailors 
were year after year penetrating a little farther into the myste- 
rious tropical seas and uncovering new reaches ol the western 
coast of Africa. The soul and inspiration of all this maritime 
enterprise was Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). 

In the year 1442 the Portuguese mariners reached the Gulf 
of Guinea, and here discovered the home of the true negro. 
Some of the ebony-skinned natives were carried to Portugal as 
slaves. This was the beginning of the modern African slave 
trade, which was destined to shape such large sections of the 
history of the centuries with which we have to do. The traffic 
was at first approved by even the most philanthropic persons, 
on the ground that the certain conversion of the slaves under 
Christian masters would more than compensate them for their 
loss of freedom. 

Finally, in i486, Bartholomew Dias succeeded in reaching the 
most southern point of the continent, which, as the possibility of 
reaching India by sea now seemed assured, was later given the 
name of Cape of Good Hope. But at the same time it was a dis- 
appointment to the Portuguese to find that Africa extended 
so far to the south. Even should India be reached, the way, it 
was now known, would be long and dangerous. This knowledge 
stimulated efforts to reach the Indies and the ''place of spices" 
by a different and shorter route. 

277. Columbus in Search of a Westward Route to the Indies 
finds the New World (1492). It was Christopher Colurribus, a 
Genoese by birth, who now proposed the bold plan of reaching 



§277] 



CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS 



251 



these eastern lands by sailing westward. The sphericity of the 
earth was a doctrine held by all the really learned men of this 
time. This notion was also familiar to many at least of the com- 
mon people; but they, while vaguely accepting the view that the 
earth is round, thought that the habitable part was a comparatively 
flat, shieldlike plain on the top of it. All the rest they thought 
to be covered by the 



waters of a great ocean. 

While agreed as to 
the globular form of 
the earth and of the 
curvature of the land 
as well as of the water 
surface, scholars dif- 
fered as to the propor- 
tion of land and water. 
The common opinion 
among them was that 
the greater part of the 
earth's surface was 
water. Some, however, 
believed that three 
fourths or more of its 
surface was land, and 
that only a narrow 
ocean separated the 
western shores of Europe from the eastern shores of Asia. 
Columbus held this latter view and also shared with others 
a misconception as to the size of the earth, supposing it to be 
much smaller than it really is. Consequently he felt sure that a 
westward sail of three or four thousand miles would bring him to 
the Indies. Thus his very misconceptions fed his hopes and drew 
him on to his great discovery. 

Everybody knows how Columbus in his endeavors to secure 
a patron for his enterprise met at first with . repeated repulse 
and disappointment; how at last he gained the ear of Queen 




Fig. 54. Christopher Columbus. (After 

the Capriolo portrait ; from the Coliunbus 

Moiwrial Volume) 



2 52 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§278 

Isabella of Castile; how a fleet of three small vessels was fitted 
out for the explorer; and how the New World was discovered, 
— or rather rediscovered (sect. 82). 

The return of Columbus to Spain with his vessels loaded with 
the strange animal and vegetable products of the new lands he 
had found, together with several specimens of the inhabitants, — 
a race of men new to Europeans, — produced the profoundest 
sensation among all classes. Curiosity was unbounded. The spirit 
of hazardous enterprise awakened by the surprising discovery led 
to those subsequent undertakings by Castilian adventurers which 
make up the most thrilling pages of Spanish history. 

Columbus made altogether four voyages to the new lands; 
still he died in ignorance of the fact that he had really discov- 
ered a new world. He supposed the land he had found to be 
some part of the Indies, whence the name West Indies which 
still clings to the islands between North and South America, and 
the term Indians applied to the aborigines. It was not until 
the middle of the sixteenth century that it became fully estab- 
lished that a great new double continent, separated from Asia by 
an ocean wider than the Atlantic, had been found. 

Columbus never received during his lifetime a fitting recog- 
nition of the unparalleled service he had rendered Spain and the 
world. Jealousy pursued him, and from his third voyage he was 
sent home loaded with chains. Even the continent he had dis- 
covered, instead of being called after him as a perpetual memo- 
rial, was named for a Florentine navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, 
whose chief claim to this distinction was his having written the 
first widely published account of the new lands. 

278. The Voyage of Vasco da Gama (i497-i498); the 
Portuguese create a Colonial Empire in the East. We have 
seen that by the year i486 the Portuguese navigators, in their 
search for an ocean route to the Indies, had reached the southern 
point of Africa. A little later, six years after the first voyage of 
Columbus, Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese admiral, doubled the 
Cape, crossed the Indian Ocean, and landed on the coast of 
Malabar. 



§279] ^PAPAL LINE OF DEMARCATION 253 

The discovery of an unbroken water path to India effected 
most important changes in the trade routes and traffic of the 
world. It made the port of Lisbon the depot of the Eastern 
trade. The merchants of Venice were ruined. The great ware- 
houses of Alexandria were left empty. The old route to the 
Indies by way of the Red Sea, which had been from time imme- 
morial a main line of communication between the Far East and 
the Mediterranean lands, now fell into disuse, not to be reopened 
until the construction of the Suez Canal in our own day. 

Portugal dotted the coasts of Africa and Asia, the Moluccas 
and other islands of the Pacific archipelago, with fortresses and 
factories, and built up in these parts a great commercial empire, 
and, through the extraordinary impulse thus given to the enter- 
prise and ambition of her citizens, now entered upon the most 
splendid era of her history. 

279. The Papal Line of Demarcation. Remarkable and bold 
as were the voyages of Columbus and Vasco da Gama, these 
were now to be eclipsed by the still more adventurous enterprise 
of the circumnavigation of the globe by Ferdinand Magellan, a 
navigator of Portuguese birth. But to make intelligible the object 
of this expedition there is needed a word of explanation con- 
cerning what is known as the Papal Line of Demarcation. 

Upon the return of Columbus from his successful expedition. 
Pope Alexander VI, with a view to adjusting the conflicting claims 
of Spain and Portugal, issued a bull wherein he drew from pole 
to pole a line of demarcation through the Atlantic one hundred 
leagues west of the Azores^ (the line was afterwards moved two 
hundred and seventy leagues westward-) and awarded to the 
Spanish sovereigns all pagan lands, not already in possession of 
Christian princes, that their subjects might find west of this line, 
and to the Portuguese kings all unclaimed pagan lands discovered 

1 As it was impossible for the surveyors and geometers to fix upon the right 
starting point, the indefiniteness of the language of the bull made no end of trouble. 
See Bourne's Essays in Historical Criticism, Essay vii. 

2 One result of this change was to throw the eastward projecting part of South 
America (Brazil) to the east of the demarcation line, and thus to make it a Portuguese 
instead of a Spanish possession. 



2 54 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§280 

by Portuguese navigators east of the designated meridian.^ By 
treaty arrangements as well as by papal edicts — which were based 
on the theory of that time that the ocean like the land might be 
appropriated by any power and absolute control over it asserted - 
— the Portuguese were prohibited from sailing any of the seas 
thus placed under the dominion of Spain or from visiting as 
traders any of her lands, and the Spaniards from trespassing upon 
the waters or the lands granted to the Portuguese. 

Spain was thus shut out from the use of the Cape route to the 
Indies which had been opened up by Vasco da Gama, and con- 
sequently from participation in the coveted spice trade, unless 
perchance a way to the region of spices could be found through 
some opening in the new lands discovered by Columbus. 

280, The Circumnavigation of the Globe by Magellan 
(1519-1522). Such was the situation of things when Magellan 
laid before the young Emperor Charles V, grandson of the Isabella 
who had given Columbus his commission, his plan of reaching 
the Moluccas, or "Spice Islands," — which he contended were in 
Spanish waters," — by a westward voyage. The young king looked 
with favor upon the navigator's plans and placed under his com- 
mand a fleet of five small vessels. 

Magellan directed his ships in a southwesterly course across 
the Atlantic, hoping to find towards the south a break in the new- 
found lands. Near the most southern point of South America he 
found the narrow strait that now bears his name. Through this 
channel the bold sailor pushed his vessels and found himself upon 

1 The claim of the popes to the right thus to dispose of pagan lands was believed 
to be supported by such Scripture texts as this : ''• Ask of me, and I shall give 
thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for 
thy possession" (Psalms ii. 8). Spain and Portugal recognized this claim, but the 
Catholic sovereigns in general only in so far as it coincided with their interests 
to do so. After the Lutheran revolt the rulers of the Protestant states gave no 
heed to it. 

2 Hugo Grotius (15S3-1645), the eminent Dutch jurist, in a treatise entitled ALi>-e 
Liicritm, refuted this theory, and in opposition to it maintained that the ocean should 
be free to all, — a far-reaching doctrine which finally became a part of the common law 
of nations. 

3 There was difficulty in determining just where among the islands lying southeast 
of Asia the papal line of demarcation, when carried around the globe, should run. 



§280] VOYAGE OF MAGELLAN 255 

a great sea with a blank horizon to the west. From the calm, 
unruffled face of the new ocean, so different from the stormy 
Atlantic, he gave to it the name Pacific. 

The voyage of these first intruders^ from the Old World upon 
the unknown sea, beneath the strange constellations of the south- 
ern skies, was one of almost incredible sufferings, endured with 
the bravest fortitude. Finally, on March 16, 1521, Magellan 
reached the group of islands now known as the Philippines, hav- 
ing been so named in honor of Philip II, Charles' son and his 
successor on the Spanish throne. 

The year following the discovery of the Philippines a single 
battered ship of the fleet, the Victoria, with eighteen men out of 
the original crews of over two hundred sailors, entered the Spanish 
port of Seville. The globe had for the first time been circum- 
navigated. The most adventurous enterprise of which record has 
been preserved had been successfully accomplished. " In the whole 
history of human undertakings," says Draper, "there is nothing 
that exceeds, if, indeed, there is anything that equals, this voyage 
of ]\Iagellan's. That of Columbus dwindles away in comparison." 

Equally does the exploit seem to have impressed the imagi- 
nation of Magellan's own age. The old writer Richard Eden 
(b. about 1 521) refers to it as "a thing doubtless so strange and 
marvelous that, as the like was never done before, so is it perhaps 
never like to be done again; so far have the navigations of the 
Spaniards excelled the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts to the 
region of Colchis, or all that ever were before"; and a Spanish 
contemporary declares, "Nothing more notable in navigation has 
ever been heard of since the voyage of the patriarch Noah." 

The results of the achievement were greater in the intellectual 
realm than in the commercial or the political domain. It revo- 
lutionized whole systems of mediaeval theory and belief; it pushed 
aside old narrow geographical ideas; it settled forever and for all 
men the question as to the shape and size of the earth. It brought 
to an end the scholastic controversy concerning the antipodes, 
— that is, whether there were men living on the "under" side 

1 The Pacific had several years before this been seen at the Isthmus of Darien. 



256 



GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES 



[§281 




of the earth. The state of most men's minds in regard to this 
matter had till then been just about the same as is ours to-day 
on the question whether or not ttie planets are inhabited. 

281. These Voyages and Geographical Discoveries ushered 
in a New Epoch. By some geographers civilization is conceived 
as having passed through three stages, — the potamic (or river) 

stage, the thalassic (or in- 
land sea) stage, and the 
oceanic stage. In the case 
of our own civilization, 
whose beginnings we seek in 
Egypt and Babylonia, these 
steps or stages seem fairly 
well defined and mark off 
historical times into three 
great periods, which may be 
named the River Epoch, the 
Sea Epoch, and the Ocean 
Epoch. 

The River Epoch was that 
during which civilization was 
confined to river valleys, like 
those of the Nile, the Tigris, 
and the Euphrates. The 
chief cities of this period, as, 
for instance, Memphis and 
Thebes in Egypt, Nineveh 
and Babylon in Mesopotamia, arose on the banks of great 
streams. Rivers were the pathways of commerce. Boats were 
small, and the art of sea navigation was practically unknown. 

The Sea Epoch was that during which the Mediterranean was 
the main theater of civilization. It was ushered in by the 
Phoenicians, the first skillful sea navigators. From the river banks 
the seats of trade and population were transferred to or near the 
shores of the Mediterranean, and Tyre and Sidon and Carthage 
and Ephesus and Miletus and Byzantium and Corinth and Athens 



Fig. 55. " The Antipodes in Deri- 
sion." (From Cosmas, CJirisiiaii Topog- 
raphy ; after Beazley, T/ie Down of 
Modern Geograpliy) 

Cosmas lived in the sixth Christian century. In 
the cut here reproduced from his Topograpliy, 
he ridicules the idea of a round earth with 
people on the underside whose heads hang 
downwards. The views of Cosmas as to the 
existence of an antipodal people had defenders 
throughout the mediaeval centuries 



§282] EARLY COLONIAL EMPIRES 257 

and Rome arose and played their parts in the transactions of the 
thalassic age. So largely did the events of this age center in and 
about the Mediterranean that this sea has been aptly called the 
Forum of the ancient world. 

The Ocean Epoch was opened up by the voyages and geo- 
graphical discoveries of which we have just been speaking. In 
this period the great oceans have ceased to be barriers between 
the nations and have become instead the natural highways of 
the world's intercourse and commerce.^ 

282. The Five Early Colonial Empires. One of the most 
important phases of the earlier history of this Ocean Epoch was 
the expansion of the five states on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe 
— namely, Portugal, Spain, France, the Netherlands, and Eng- 
land — each into a great empire, embracing colonies and depend- 
encies in two hemispheres. This expansion of Europe into Greater 
Europe holds somewhat such a place in modern history as the 
expansion of Hellas into Greater Hellas and of Rome into Greater 
Rome holds in ancient history. 

In the mutual jealousies and the conflicting interests of these 
growing colonial empires is to be found the ground and cause 
of many of the great wars of modern times since the close of 
the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
For this reason, although it is our special task to trace the lines 
of the historic development in Europe, we shall from time to 
time call the reader's attention to these European interests out- 
side of the European continent. In the present connection a 
few words in regard to Spanish conquests and the beginnings 
of Spanish colonization in the New World will suffice. 

283. The Conquest of Mexico (1519-1521). The accounts 
of Spanish explorations and conquests in the lands opened up 
by the fortunate voyage of Columbus read more like a romance 
than any other chapter in history. They tell of men growing 
old while hunting through strange lands for the Fountain of 

1 The Ocean Epoch may be conceived as embracing two periods, — the Atlantic 
and the Pacific period. The latter is just opening. See Chapter XLII on the 
expansion of Europe. 



2 58 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§283 

Youth; of expeditions lost for years to the knowledge of men, 
while searching beneath gloomy forests for El Dorado; of explo- 
rations upon seas and amidst mountains never before looked upon 
by men of the Old World; of voyages on ocean-like rivers which 
led no one knew where; and of ancient states conquered and 
their enormous accumulations of gold and silver seized by a few 
score adventurous knights/ 

Perhaps the most brilliant exploit in which the Spanish cava- 
liers engaged during this period of daring and romantic adventure 
was the conciuest of Mexico. Reports of a rich and powerful 
"Empire" upon the mainland to the west were constantly spread 
among the Spanish colonists, who very soon after the discovery of 
the New World settled the islands in the Gulf of Mexico. These 
stories inflamed the imagination of adventurous spirits among the 
settlers, and an expedition, consisting of five or six hundred foot 
soldiers and sixteen horsemen, was organized and placed under 
the command of Hernando Cortes for the conquest and "con- 
version" of the heathen nation. The expedition was successful, 
and soon the Spaniards were masters of the greater part of what 
now constitutes the republic of Mexico. 

The state that the conquerors destroyed was not an empire, 
as termed by the contemporary Spanish chroniclers, but rather 
a sort of league or confederacy — something like the Iroquois 
confederacy in the North — formed of three Indian tribes.- Of 
these the Aztecs were the leading tribe and gave name to the 
confederacy. At the head of the league stood a sachem, or 
war-chief, who bore the name of Montezuma. 

The Aztecs, at the time of the discovery of America, had 
reached what is called the "middle stage of barbarism," — a 
stage of culture which the Mediterranean races had reached 

1 Juan Ponce de Leon started on his romantic expedition in search of the fabled 
spring in 15 12; Vasco de Balboa discovered the Pacific in 1513; Hernando de Soto, 
while searching for a rich Indian kingdom, found the Mississippi in 1541; and in 
the same year Francisco de Orellana descended the eastern slope of the Andes to 
the Napo, floated down that stream to the Amazon, and then drifted on down to the sea. 

2 Prescott's description of the Mexican state, especially as to its political organization, 
is misleading. For later authorities see bibliography at the end of the chapter. 




EXPLORATIONS AND COLOIVIES 
OF THE 15TH, 16TH,AND 17TH CENTURIDS 
] FRENCH C 



BRITISn 

SPANISH ri 



] DAM8H \ I 



POKTUGTJESEL 



DUTCH 



British and French Rival Claims 1 



II \ 



20 Longitude 40 KasI from 60 Greenwich 80 



S284] CONQUEST OF PERU 259 

and passed probably two thousand years before Christ. They 
employed a system of picture-writing. Their religion was a sort 
of sun worship. They were cannibals and offered human victims 
in their sacrifices. They had no knowledge of the horse or the 
ox or of any other useful domesticated animal except the dog.' 
They cultivated maize, but were without wheat, oats, or barley. 
They held their lands in common, and lived in communal or 
joint-tenement houses, which were large enough to accommo- 
date from ten to one hundred families. It was these immense 
structures which the Spanish writers described as "palaces" and 
"public edifices." These buildings were, doubtless, the same 
in plan as those to be seen at the present day among the Pueblo 
Indians of the southwestern part of the United States. 

284. The Conquest of Peru (1532-1536). Shortly after the 
conquest of the Indians of Mexico the subjugation of the Indians 
of Peru was effected. The civilization of the Peruvians was supe- 
rior to that of the Mexicans. It has been compared, as to several 
of its elements, to that of ancient Assyria. Not only were the 
great cities of the empire filled with splendid temples and pal- 
aces, but throughout the country were to be seen magnificent 
works of public utility, such as roads, bridges, and aqueducts. 
The government of the Incas, the royal or ruling race, was a 
mild paternal autocracy. 

Glowing reports of the enormous wealth of the Incas, the 
commonest articles in whose palaces, it was asserted, were of 
solid gold, reached the Spaniards by way of the Isthmus of 
Darien, and it was not long before an expedition, consisting 
of less than two hundred men, was organized for the conquest 
of the country. The leader of the band was Francisco Pizarro, 
an iron-hearted, cruel, and illiterate adventurer. 

1 It has been conjectured that the backwardness in civilization of the native races 
of the Americas is to be attributed in part to their lack of useful tame animals. See 
Fiske, The Discovery of America, vol. i, p. 27. The native fauna of the New World 
as compared with that of the Old is singularly poor in tamable species. Aside from 
the llama, the alpaca, and the turkey, the New World has contributed nothing of 
essential value to the great store of domesticated stocks which constitute the basis of 
so large a part of modern industry. 



2 6o GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§285 

Through treachery Pizarro made a prisoner of the Inca, Ata- 
hualpa. The captive offered, as a ransom for his release, to fill 
the room in which he was confined "as high as he could reach" 
with vessels of gold. Pizarro accepted the offer, and the palaces 
and temples throughout the empire were stripped of their golden 
vessels, and the apartment was filled with the precious relics. The 
value of the treasure is estimated at over $15,000,000. When 
this vast wealth was once under the control of the Spaniards, 
they seized it all, and then treacherously put the Inca to death 
(1533)- With the death of Atahualpa the power of the Inca 
dynasty passed away forever. 

285. Beginnings of Spanish Colonization in the New World. 
Not until more than one hundred years after the discovery of 
the Western Hemisphere by Columbus was there established a 
single permanent English settlement within the limits of what is 
now the United States; but into those parts of the new lands 
opened up by Spanish exploration and conquest there began to 
pour at once a tremendous stream of Spanish adventurers and 
colonists in search of fortune and fame. Upon the West India 
Islands, in Mexico, in Central America, all along the Pacific slope 
of the Andes, and everywhere upon the lofty and pleasant table- 
lands that had formed the heart of the empire of the Incas, there 
sprang up rapidly cities as centers of mining and agricultural 
industries, of commerce, and of trade. Often, as in the case of 
Mexico, Quito, and Cuzco, these new cities were simply the 
renovated and rebuilt towns of the conquered natives. 

Thus did a Greater Spain grow up in the New World. Before 
the close of the sixteenth century the Spanish dominions in the 
new lands formed of themselves a magnificent empire and were the 
source, chiefly through their gold and silver mines, of a large 
revenue to the royal exchequer. It was, in part, the treasures 
derived from these new possessions that enabled the sovereigns 
of Spain to play the important part they did in the affairs of 
Europe during the century following the discovery of America.^ 

1 After having robbed the Indians of their wealth in gold and silver, the slowr 
accumulations of centuries, the Spaniards further enriched themselves by the enforced 



§285] AN HISTORICAL PARALLEL 261 



Suggestion to Teachers — Comparative Study 

In no way, we think, will the teacher be able to give his pupils so 
clear an idea of the character of the sixteenth century as by having 
them make a comparative study of that century and the nineteenth. 
The striking parallels which they will discover between the two 
periods will be sure to suggest to them that "the wonderful nine- 
teenth century," as it is called by Alfred Russel Wallace, hke the 
sixteenth, may be a transition period, a period which will be regarded 
by the future historian as we regard the sixteenth, — as the beginning 
of a new age in history. Having gained this viewpoint, they will see 
all the events, movements, and enterprises of the earlier period under 
a familiar light. The following will suggest in what realms parallels 
may be sought. 

The Sixteenth Century The Nineteenth Century 

a. The New Learning. Great intel- a. The New Sciences. Great intel- 

lectual activity. lectual activity. 

b. The Reformation. Revision of /'. The New Theology. Revision of 

creeds. Relation of the religious creeds. Relation of this move- 

movement to the Renaissance. ment to the birth of the new 

scientific spirit. 

c. The unification of great nations, — c. The unification of great nations, — 

England, France, Spain. Germany, Italy. 



labor of the unfortunate natives. Unused to such toil as was exacted of them under the 
lash of worse than Egyptian taskmasters, the Indians wasted away by millions in the 
mines of Mexico and Peru and upon the sugar plantations of the West Indies. More 
than half of the native population of Peru is thought to have been consumed in the 
Peruvian mines. " During fifty years," says a recent writer, " the Spaniards uniformly 
conquered and enslaved [the natives] ; put them to forced labour, to which they were 
physically unequal ; and on the least resistance or other provocation, massacred them 
in great numbers. One estimate says that in these years 40,000,000 of the native 
Americans perished by violence : the lowest makes the number 10,000,000 ; and it is to 
be feared the former is nearer the truth. It is certain that the islands of the West 
Indies once contained nearly 6,000,000 of a race now quite extinct; and that in Hayti 
alone they sank, in fifteen years, from 1,000,000 to 60,000, and, in fifty years, to 200 " 
(Payne, European Colonics, pp. 89, 90). As a substitute for native labor, negroes were 
introduced. This was the beginning of the African slave trade in the New World. 
At the outset the traffic was approved by a benevolent bishop named Las Casas 
(1474-1566), known as the "Apostle of the Indians." Before his death, however. Las 
Casas came to recognize the wickedness of negro as well as of Indian slavery and to 
regret that he had ever expressed approval of the plan of substituting one for the 
other. See Fiske, The Discovery of America, vol. ii, pp. 454-458. 



2 62 GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERIES [§285 

The Sixteenth Century The Nineteenth Century 

d. The expansion of Europe ; the d. The expansion of Europe ; the par- 
partition of the New World and tition of Africa and of Oceania, 
of southern Asia. The formation The formation of new colonial 
of colonial empires, — Portu- empires, — English, French, Ger- 
guese, Spanish, Dutch, French, man, Belgian, and American, 
and English. 



Great geographical and astronom- 
ical discoveries (Columbus, Co- 
pernicus), which reveal the uni- 
verse as infinite in space. Man's 
conceptions concerning the earth 



Great geological and biological dis- 
coveries {Evolution — Lyeli, Dar- 
win), which reveal the universe 
as infinite in time. Man's con- 
ceptions as to his origin and his 



... . , . place m the plan of creation 

and Its place \\\ the universe rev- , . . , 

, . . , revolutionized, 
olutionized. 

f. Great inventions, now first hit /. Great inventions, — the steam rail- 

upon or brought into general use, way, the ocean steamship, the 

— printing, gunpowder, and the electric telegraph, electric motor, 

mariner's compass. Political, etc. Political, social, and eco- 

social, and economic revolutions nomic revolutions caused or 

caused or promoted by them. furthered by their introduction. 

Selections from the Sources. Cathay and the Way Thither (ed. by Colonel 
Henry Yule). The student here learns with what knowledge of Eastern Asia 
Columbus and the others set out, and what they expected to find. The Jojirnal 
of Ch7-istophe7- Coliirnbiis (Hakluyt Society publications). Old South Leaflets. 
Nos. 29, 31-36, 39, 71, 89, 90, 102. The First Three English Books on America 
(ed. by Edward Arber). This work possesses a special fascination. 

Secondary Works. Keane, J., The Evolution of Geography, chaps, v-viii. 
Beazley, C. R., Prince Hcniy the iVavigator. There are numerous lives 
of Columbus : Winsor's, Irving's, and C. K. Adams' are recommended. 
GuiLLEMARD, F. H. H., The Life of Ferdinand Magellan. Fiske, J., The Dis- 
covoy of America, 2 vols (there is not a chapter here that will fail to interest 
and charm young readers). The Cambridge Alodern LIisto?y, vol. i, chap, i, 
" The Age of Discovery "; and chap, ii, " The New World." Bourne, E. G., 
Essays in Historical Criticism, Essay No. 7, "The Demarcation Line of Pope 
Alexander VI"; and Spain^ in Ame7-ica (1450-1580). Prescott, W. H., Con- 
quest of Mexico and Conquest of Pent (should be read with later works). 
Payne, E. J., Histoty of the N'eiv World called Amet-ica, vol. i, pp. 303-364 
(for the relation of the native civilizations of the Americas to their animal and 
plant life). 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Prince Henry the Navigator: Bourne, E. G., 
Essays in Historical Criiicisin, Essay No. 6. 2. The civilization of the Aztecs: 
Fiske, J., The Discovery of America, vol. ii, chap, viii, pp. 215-239. 3. The 
civilization of the Peruvians: Fiske, J., The Discovery of Aynerica, vol. ii, 
chap, ix ; Winsor, J., A'arrative and Critical History of America, vol. i, chap. iv. 



CHAPTER XX 
THE BEGINNINGS OF THE REFORMATION 

286. Introductory Statement. When the Modern Age opened 
the European peoples were on the eve of a great rehgious revolu- 
tion. This was a dual movement. It was an insurrection against 
the Papacy, resulting in the severance by half the nations of 
Europe of the bonds which throughout the mediaeval time had 
united them to the ecclesiastical empire of the Roman pontiffs. 
Since the secession movement was successful, it is rightly called 
a revolution, — the Protestant Revolution. 

But the movement was something more than a successful 
rebellion against ecclesiastical authority. It was, as we shall 
learn, caused in large part by the existence of certain evils and 
abuses in the Church, and resulted in a great renovation of the 
religious and moral life of Western Christendom. Hence it is 
properly spoken of as a reform, — as the Reformation. 

That the movement was a dual one should be carefully noted, 
for it is only when regarded from both the indicated points of 
view that its complex phenomena can be intelligently observed 
and rightly interpreted. In the present chapter we shall speak of 
the causes and the beginnings of the revolution in Germany; in 
succeeding chapters we shall follow the vicissitudes of its fortunes 
in the principal countries of northern Europe. 

287. Causes of the Reformation. Our first endeavor must be 
to get some sort of comprehension of what caused the northern 
nations of Europe first to become dissatisfied with the state of 
things ecclesiastical and religious and then to secede from the 
ancient Church. There were various causes. 

One cause was the Renaissance, that great intellectual awaken- 
ing which marked the close of the mediaeval and the opening 
of the modern epoch. We shall see in a moment how it was 
the antagonism which developed between the promoters of the 

263 



2 64 THE REFORMATION [§287 

new humanistic learning and the upholders of the old scholastic 
theology that helped to prepare the way for the great schism. 

A second cause of the revolution was the existence in the 
Church of most serious scandals and abuses. The necessity of 
the thorough reform of the Church in both "head and members" 
was recognized by all earnest and spiritually minded men. The 
only difference of opinion among such was as to the manner in 
which the work of renovation should be effected, whether from 
within or from without, by reform or by revolution. 

A third cause was jealousy of the Papacy on the part of the 
temporal princes, and the clash of papal claims with the rising 
sentiment of national patriotism. It is true that the claims to 
temporal supremacy put forward by some of the mediaeval popes 
were no longer maintained; still there remained a very large field 
embracing matters such as appointment or nomination to Church 
offices, the taxation of the clergy and of Church property, ques- 
tions concerning marriages, wills, and so on, which the popes as 
the guardians of religion claimed the right to regulate or to review. 
Thus the nations were really very far from being independent. 
As respects many matters which we now regard as attaching to 
national sovereignty, they were virtually provinces of an ecclesi- 
astical world empire centered at Rome. 

The situation might be illustrated by a comparison with that 
in a federal commonwealth like our own. Just as in our Union 
every person owes allegiance to two authorities, that of his State 
and that of the Federal Government, so in mediaeval times every 
person owed allegiance to two authorities, — to his own king and 
to the Roman pontiff. And as before our Civil War it was often 
difficult for one to determine whether his first duty was to his 
own State or to the Federal Government, so before the Protestant 
Revolution it was often difficult for one to decide to which he 
owed superior allegiance, — to his own prince or to the Pope. As 
regards the monks and the other " clergy, the question was apt 
to be decided in favor of the Papal See, for they were prone to 
regard themselves as subjects of the Pope rather than as subjects 
of the king under whose rule they lived. 



§288] CAUSES OF THE REFORMATION 265 

But it was at the point where the papal supremacy interfered 
with the financial interests of the lay governments that the most 
friction and trouble developed. As head of the Church the popes 
were drawing an immense revenue from every state embraced 
within the ecclesiastical empire. A large part of the landed prop- 
erty of Europe was in the hands of the Church, and a consider- 
able portion of the vast revenues derived from it was, in the form 
of annates and contributions of the clergy, drawn into the Roman 
treasury. Furthermore, through the system of papal indulgences 
(sect. 290) vast additional sums were collected for papal use in all 
the different countries. In some countries the direct and indirect 
contributions of the people to the Papal See probably exceeded 
the taxes which they paid to their own government. Moreover, 
it was a matter of notoriety that the immense sums drawn to Rome 
were not always used in the promotion of religious objects, but 
in the hands of unworthy pontiffs like Alexander VI were used 
to further personal ambitions or to promote the political fortunes 
of the Papacy. 

This state of things culminating just at the time when the 
sentiment of nationality was awakening in several of the different 
countries and just when the secular governments, growing stronger, 
were assuming new functions and were requiring larger revenues 
for the maintenance of their standing armies and for other public 
purposes, it was inevitable that among the civil rulers the situation 
should come to be regarded with feelings of ill-will and impatience. 
It is doubtless true that in several of the northern countries it 
was this condition of things which had more to do in bringing 
about the secession from Rome than had the desire of religious 
freedom or of moral reform. 

The circumstances marking the outbreak of the revolution, 
which we shall now proceed to consider, will afford a commentary 
on this brief statement of the causes which produced it. 

288. The Humanists Erasmus and Reuchlin, The relation 
of humanism to the Reformation will best be revealed by the 
presentation of a few facts illustrative of the spirit and aims of 
the humanists of the North, 



2 66 



THE REFORMATION 



[§288 



Desiderius Erasmus (1467?-! 536) of Rotterdam was the 
leader of the humanistic movement in the North, as Petrarch was 
the father of the movement in the South. His celebrated satire 
entitled Moriae Encomium, or "Praise of Folly" (1509), was 
directed against the foibles of all classes of society, but particu- 
larly against the sins of "unholy men in holy orders." A little 
later (in 1516) Erasmus published his Novum Instrumentum, the 

Greek text of the 
New Testament with 
a Latin version. These 
publications must be 
assigned a prominent 
place among the vari- 
ous agencies which 
prepared the minds 
and hearts of the 
northern peoples for 
the Reformation. 

As was inevitable 
a conflict soon de- 
veloped between the 
theologians — who 
were the champions 
of the old Scholasti- 
cism — and the pro- 
moters of the new 
humanistic learning. It was the first phase in modern times 
of the age-long warfare between Theology and Science. The 
first blows exchanged by the two parties were given in a con- 
troversy in which the real principle involved was the freedom 
of scholars in their investigations and the limits of theological' 
authority in matters of scholarship. The war raged around the 
person of the eminent humanist John Reuchlin (1455-1522), the 
same whom we have seen in the closing years of the fifteenth 
century trudging over the Alps in order to study Greek at the 
feet of the Italian masters (sect. 262). 




"^^-v-"*^ X^ 



Fig. 56. Erasmus. (After a painting by //f?/*^^/;/) 



§289] HUMANISM AND RELIGIOUS REFORM 267 

Hostilities had arisen in this way. It had been proposed by 
haters of the Jews that their books should be taken from them 
and burned, on the ground that these works were unfriendly to 
Christianity. Reuchlin, who was the best Hebrew scholar of his 
time, was asked, by the authorities before whom the matter had 
been brought, for his opinion on the proposal. He advised 
against it, and embraced the opportunity to say that much of the 
Jewish literature might be read by Christians with great advan- 
tage to themselves. This caused Reuchlin to be bitterly attacked 
by the clerical party. The theological faculties of many of the 
German universities and that of the University of Paris con- 
demned his views, while the humanists, among others Erasmus, 
sent him letters of approval and encouragement. Some of these 
Reuchlin published under the title of Epistolae Clarorum Virorum, 
or ''Letters of Illustrious Men." 

The appearance of this collection suggested to some of Reuch- 
lin's friends- — the celebrated humanist and picturesque knight- 
poet, Ulrich von Hutten (1488-1523), was among them — the 
putting out of a work bearing the title Epistolae Obscurorum 
Virorum, ox "Letters of Obscure Men" (1515-1517). This was 
a collection of fictitious letters, written in "choicest bad Latin" 
and abounding in all sorts of absurdities, in which the party 
opposed to Reuchlin was made the subject of rollicking satire 
and merciless ridicule. To the humanists it was "capital fun," as 
More wrote to Erasmus. 

289. The Humanistic Movement becomes a Religious Re- 
form. The attacks of the humanists on the theologians had been 
inspired primarily not so much by religious feeling or moral indig- 
nation as by a love of sound scholarship and contempt for the 
ignorance and pedantry of the opposers of the New Learning. 
The controversy now assumed a more serious phase. It took on 
the character of a religious debate, became a matter of conscience, 
also became mixed with political matters, and then finally devel- 
oped into open war between the two parties. 

The simple narration of events as they unfolded in Germany 
will best convey an idea of how special circumstances and, above 



268 THE REFORMATION [§290 

all, the appearance of a great man with deep convictions and 
violent passions gave this new trend to the historic movement. 

290, Indulgences; Purgatory. Since the subject matter of the 
debate in its new form was papal indulgences, a word concern- 
ing these will here be necessary to render intelligible the opening 
episodes of the great revolution. 

An indulgence, as understood and defined by German theo- 
logians of Luther's time, was the remission of that temporal pun- 
ishment which often remains due on account of sin after its guilt 
has been forgiven.^ It was granted on the performance of some 
work of piety, charity, or mercy, which often included an alms to 
the poor or a gift of money to promote some good work, and 
took effect only upon certain conditions, among which was that 
of confession of sin and sincere repentance. 

Since much of the opposition to indulgences arose from their 
application to souls in purgatory and to abuses arising in this 
connection, a word of explanation is here also necessary. 

According to Catholic teaching, the other world embraces three 
regions, — hell, purgatory, and heaven. This belief is embodied 
in the great poem of the mediaeval ages, Dante's Divine Comedy. 
Purgatory is a place or state intermediate between heaven and 
hell, where souls destined for eternal bliss are cleansed through 
suffering. This belief in an intermediate place of punishment 
came to be of historical significance because, according to Catholic 
doctrine, souls in this place of purification can be helped and 
their probation shortened by the prayers and good works of their 
surviving friends in their behalf. Thus Dante on the terraces of 
the Mount of Purification met spirits who told him that their 

1 The following is the definition given by Johann von Paltz, a contemporary of 
Luther, in his authoritative treatise on indulgences (Coc///oc/i//a, ed. of 15 ii) : 
hidiilgcntia est rcmissio pooiac icmporalis dcbitac peccaiis acinalibiis poaiitcnttuni non 
remissae in ahsobttionc scicramcniali : jacia a praclato ccclcslac yationabiliter et ex 
taiionabili caitsa : per rccompensationern de poejia tndcbiia justorum. " An indulgence 
is a remission of that temporal penalty deserved by the actual sins of penitents which 
has not been remitted in sacramental absolution,- — a remission granted by a prelate of 
the Church, in rational manner and for rational cause, on the ground of the penalty 
already paid by the undeserved punishment of the just." By " temporal " punishment 
is meant penances imposed by the Church and the temporary pains of purgatory, as 
opposed to the eternal punishment of hell. 



§291] THE PREACHING OF INDULGENCES 269 

allotted time of suffering had been shortened by the mediatorial 
prayers of their friends. The vast endowments of the mediaeval 
monasteries were in large part given that Masses might be said for 
the repose of the souls of the donors. But not only were interces- 
sory prayers counted capable of releasing souls from purgatory, 
the indulgence also, granted in virtue of the good works or alms 
of friends, operated in the same way to free souls from their 
sufferings. 

Before the time of the Reformation, indulgences had been 
frequently granted by various pontiffs, with different objects 
in view. Thus in the time of the Crusades plenary^ indulgences 
were offered to all who assumed the cross. Indulgences were 
also often resorted to as a means of raising money for the con- 
struction and maintenance of churches, convents, and bridges, 
and for the promotion of other local undertakings. A great part 
of the money for the building of St. Peter's at Rome was obtained 
in this manner. 

291. Tetzel and the Preaching of Indulgences. Leo X, upon 
his election to the papal dignity in 15 13, found the coffers of the 
Church almost empty, and being in pressing need of money to 
carry on his various undertakings, among which was work upon 
St. Peter's, he had recourse to the now common expedient of a 
grant of indulgences. He delegated the power of dispensing these 
%ra great part of Germany to Archbishop Albert of Mainz. As 
his deputy, Albert employed a Dominican friar by the name of 
John Tetzel. 

The archbishop was unfortunate in the selection of his agent. 
Tetzel carried out his commission in such a way as to give rise to 
a great scandal. The language that he and his subordinates used 
in exhorting the people to comply with the conditions of gaining 
the indulgences — one of which was a donation of money — was 
unseemly and exaggerated. 

The result was that erroneous views as to the effect of indul- 
gences began to spread among the ignorant and credulous, many 

1 A plenary or full indulgence remits to a penitent the whole of the temporal 
punishment to which he is liable at the time of receiving the remission. 



270 



THE REFORMATION 



[§292 



being so far misled as to think that if they only contributed this 
money to the building of St. Peter's in Rome they would be 
exempt from all penalty for sins, paying little heed to the other 
conditions, such as sorrow for sin and purpose of amendment. 
Hence serious persons were led to declaim against the procedure 

of the zealous friar. These 





protests were the near 
mutterings of a storm 
that had long been 
gathering and that was 
soon to shake all Europe 
from the Baltic to the 
Mediterranean. 

292. Martin Luther; 
his Pilgrimage to Rome. 
Foremost among those 
who opposed and de- 
nounced the methods used 
by Tetzel was Martin 
Luther, an Augustinian 
monk and teacher of 
theology in the Univer- 
sity of Wittenberg. This 
great reformer was born 
in Saxony in 1483. He 
was of humble parentage, 
his father being a poor 
miner. Just as a career 
planned by his father in the profession of the law was opening 
before him, he suddenly turned his back upon the world and 
entered a convent. 

Before Tetzel appeared in Germany, Luther had already earned 
a wide reputation for learning and piety. A few years before this 
(in 1511) he had made, in the interest of his Order, a memorable 
journey to Rome. His reverence for Rome and the Pope was 
at that time unimpaired. Rome was in his eyes as sacred as 



Fig. 57. Martin Luther. (After the 

portrait by Lucas Cranach^ the elder; Uffizi 

Gallery, Florence) 



§293] THE NINETY-FIVE THESES 271 

Jerusalem. The Pope he regarded as God's representative on earth. 
He had no doubts about purgatory; he was almost sorry that his 
parents were not dead that he might, at the holy places in Rome, 
pray their souls out of that place of suffering. 

But the simple German monk saw things at Rome which gave 
his reverence a rude shock. He had expected to see every one 
"awed in perpetual reverence by the holy atmosphere of the 
place." Instead, he found luxury and skepticism, — often open 
profligacy and irreverence for holy things. All this produced a 
deep impression upon the serious-minded monk. The seed had 
been sown which was destined to yield a great harvest. 

293. The Ninety-five Theses (i5i7). It was six years after 
Luther's visit to Rome when Tetzel began in the neighborhood 
of Wittenberg, where Luther was, the preaching of indulgences 
in the scandalous manner to which we have just alluded. The 
people were running in crowds after him. Luther was greatly 
distressed. Not being able to get any one in authority to inter- 
vene to put a stop to the scandal, he resolved to take hold of the 
matter himself. Accordingly he drew up ninety-five theses bearing 
on indulgences and nailed them upon the door of the castle 
church at Wittenberg. It was a custom of those times for a 
scholar thus to post propositions which he was willing to maintain 
against any and all comers. 

By means of the press the theses were spread broadcast. They 
were eagerly read and commented upon by all classes, particularly 
in Germany. Tetzel issued counter-propositions. Learned theo- 
logians entered the lists against the presumptuous monk. The 
air was thick with controversial leaflets. At first Pope Leo had 
been inclined to make light of the whole matter, declaring that 
it was "a mere squabble of monks," but at length he felt con- 
strained to take decisive measures against Luther. The monk 
was to be silenced by means of a papal bull. 

294. Luther's "Address to the Christian Nobility of the 
German Nation" (July, 1520). Luther heard that the bull was 
soon to be launched against him. He anticipated its arrival by 
the' issuance to the German nobility of a remarkable address, 



2 72 THE REFORMATION [§295 

which has been called "The Manifesto of the Reformation." 
This was beyond question the most significant historically of all 
the productions of this age of theses and counter-theses, of bulls 
and bans, of manifestoes and appeals. It was practically a German 
declaration of independence of Rome. 

Luther demanded, among other things, that payment to the 
Pope of annates^ should be forbidden by the princes, nobles, 
and cities, or that they should be wholly abolished; that ''no 
episcopal cloak and no confirmation of an appointment should 
be obtained from Rome"; that the Pope should have no power 
whatever over the Emperor, "save to anoint and crown him at 
the altar"; and that the secular clergy (ecclesiastics not bound by 
monastic vows) should be free to marry or not to marry .^ 

295. Luther burns the Papal Bull (Dec.io, i52o). At length 
a copy of the papal bull came into Luther's hands. Forty-one 
propositions selected from his writings were therein condemned 
either as "heretical" or as "scandalous," and all persons were for- 
bidden to read his books, which were ordered to be burned; and 
he himself, if he did not retract his errors within sixty days, was, 
together with all his adherents, to be regarded as having "in- 
curred the penalty due for heresy." 

Luther now took a startling determination. He resolved to 
burn the papal bull. A fire was kindled outside one of the 
gates of Wittenberg, and in the presence of a great throng of 
doctors, students, and citizens, Luther cast the bull, together with 

1 Annates, or first fruits, were the first year's revenue, or some portion of the first 
year's revenue, of a benefice paid to the Pope by a bishop, abbot, or other ecclesiastic 
for the papal confirmation in his office. This was a most important source of revenue 
to the Roman court. The temporal princes naturally regarded these payments by their 
subjects to the Pope with great jealousy, since in this way immense sums of money 
passed out of their dominions and into the Roman treasury. Consequently this subject 
of annates was a source of endless disagreement and controversy between the civil 
governments of Europe and the Papacy. In England the prohibition of the payment 
of first fruits to the Pope was one of the earliest steps taken in the separation from 
Rome (see sect. 335). 

2 Luther was not at this time ready to release monks from their vows. Gradually, 
however, his views changed and he came to regard the celibacy of the monks 
as opposed to Scripture teachings. In the year 1525, acting upon his maturer views, 
he married Catherine Bora, a former nun. This violation by Luther of his monastic 
vows was made the subject of bitter reproach against him by his enemies. 



§296] THE DIET OF WORMS 273 

the papal decretals and some books of his opponents, into the 
flames. The audacious proceeding raised a terrible storm, which 
raged "high as the heavens, wide as the earth." Luther wrote a 
friend that he believed the tempest could never be stilled before 
the day of judgment. ^ 

296. The Diet of Worms (1521). Affairs had now assumed 
a threatening aspect. All Germany was in a state of revolt. The 
papal supremacy was imperiled. The papal ban having failed 
to produce any effect. Pope Leo now invoked the aid of the 
recently elected Emperor Charles V in extirpating the spreading 
heresy. He wished Luther to be sent to Rome for trial there. 
Luther's friends, however, persuaded Charles not to accede to the 
Pope's request, but to permit Luther to be heard in Germany. 
Accordingly Luther received an imperial summons to appear at 
Worms before an assembly of the princes, nobles, and clergy of 
Germany to be convened for the purpose of deliberating upon 
the affairs of the country, and especially upon matters touching 
the great religious controversy. 

Luther's journey to Worms was a triumphal progress. The 
eyes of all Germany were upon him. The crowds that lined the 
streets of the towns through which he passed showed how pro- 
foundly the German heart had been stirred. At Worms the roofs 
of the houses along the streets traversed by the monk in his 
entrance into the city were loaded with his sympathizers.^ 

When Luther first appeared before the brilliant and august 
assembly he was visibly embarrassed. But he soon recovered 
his composure. His books were placed before him, and he was 
asked whether he would retract what he had written therein. He 
requested a day's time to consider his answer. The next day, 
brought again before the Diet, he replied in substance : " To 
revoke these writings would be to give new force and audacity to 
the Roman tyranny. I cannot, I will not, retract anything, unless 

1 As Luther neared Worms it was whispered to him that treason against him 
was being planned within the city. His friends, alarmed at this report, tried to 
dissuade him from exposing his life by going on. It was then he made his famous 
declaration, " I would go though there were as many devils there as there are tiles on 
the roofs of the houses." 



2 74 THE REFORMATION [§297 

what I have written shall be shown to be contrary to Holy Scrip- 
ture or to plain reason, for to act against conscience is neither 
safe nor upright." His closing words were impressive: "I can do 
no otherwise; here I stand, God help me, Amen." 

Although some wished to deliver the reformer to the flames, 
the safe-conduct of the Emperor under which he had come to 
the Diet protected him. So Luther was allowed to depart in 
safety, but was followed by the ban of the Empire. 

297. Luther at the Wartburg (1521-1522). Luther, how- 
ever, had powerful friends, among whom was his own prince, 
Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony. Solicitous for the safety 
of the reformer, the prince caused him to be seized on his way 
from the Diet by a company of masked horsemen, who carried 
him to the castle of the Wartburg, where he was kept about a 
year, his retreat being known only to a few friends. 

During this period of forced retirement from the world Luther 
was busy writing pamphlets and translating the Bible. Appeal 
had been made to the Scriptures, — "Prove it from the Scrip- 
tures," "There it is written," was the constant challenge of the 
reformers to their opponents, — hence it was necessary that the 
Scriptures should be accessible in a language understood by all.^ 
It was hard work, as Luther put it, to make the old prophets 
speak German, but he made them speak it in a way which has 
fixed to this day the attention of the German nation. 

In giving Germany this translation of the Bible, Luther ren- 
dered some such service to the German tongue as Dante ren- 
dered to the Italian through his Divine Comedy. Fixing its 
literary forms, he virtually created the German language out of 
a chaos of dialects. 

298. The Peasants' War (1524-1525). Before quite a year had 
passed Luther was drawn from the Wartburg by troubles caused 
by certain radical reformers whose preaching was occasioning 
tumult and violence. Luther's sudden appearance at Wittenberg 
gave a temporary check to the agitation. 

1 There had been translations of the Bible into German before this, but the editions 
had been small and the circulation limited. 



§299] SECULARIZATION OF CHURCH PROPERTY 275 

But in the course of two or three years the trouble broke out 
afresh and in a more complex and aggravated form. The peas- 
ants of Suabia and Franconia, stung to madness by the oppres- 
sions of their feudal lords, stirred by the religious excitement 
that filled the air, and influenced by the incendiary preaching 
of their prophets Carlstadt and Miinzer, rose in revolt against 
the nobles and the priests, — against all in authority.^ Castles 
and monasteries were sacked and burned and horrible outrages 
were committed. The rebellion was finally crushed, but not 
until a hundred thousand lives had been sacrificed, a large part 
of South Germany devastated, and great reproach cast upon the 
reformers, whose teachings were held by their enemies to be the 
whole cause of the ferment.- 

299. The Secularization of Church Property. But in spite 
of all these discrediting movements the reform made rapid prog- 
ress. Nothing contributed more to win over the lay princes to the 
views of Luther than his recommendation that the monasteries 
should be suppressed and their property confiscated and devoted 
to the maintenance of churches, schools, and charities.^ 

The lay rulers were quick to act upon this suggestion and to 
go far beyond it. Within a very few years after the appearance 
of Luther's address to the German nobility and another treatise 
of his on monastic vows, wherein he pronounced such vows to be 
contrary to true Christian principles, there were confiscations of 
ecclesiastical property in all the German states that had become 
Protestant. 

In Sweden, in which country the doctrines of Luther gained 
an early foothold, almost all the property of the old Church 
was, by an act of the National Diet, given into the hands of the 

1 The demands of the peasants were embodied in a document known as the Twelve 
Articles. See Translations and Reprbifs (Univ. of Penn.), vol. ii, No. 6. 

2 About a decade after the suppression of the Peasants' Revolt the religious 
excitement of the time brought into existence the so-called New Zion, or Ana- 
baptist kingdom of Miinster, a sort of theocracy, of which the head was John 
of Leyden (i5io?-i536). There was in this movement a most startling exhibition of 
religious fanaticism. Like the rebellion of the peasants, it tended greatly to discredit 
the genuine reform party. 

S All such taking over of Church property by the State was called " secularization." 



2 76 THE REFORMATION [§300 

king, Gustavus Vasa (1524). This wealth contributed greatly to 
enhance the power and prestige of the Swedish monarchy. 

In England, King Henry VIII, under circumstances which we 
shall relate in another chapter, suppressed the monasteries and 
diverted to secular uses the greater part of their wealth. 

But the classical instance of the secularizing of Church prop- 
erty during this period is afforded by the case of the Teutonic 
Knights (sect. 138). At the beginning of the Protestant revolt 
these monk knights ruled over from two to three million subjects. 
When the reform movement began to spread over Germany the 
Grand Master of the Order ^ turned Protestant and converted the 
domains of the fraternity into an hereditary principality under 
the name of the Duchy of Prussia (1525). The knights married 
and became nobles. Thus was created out of ecclesiastical lands 
a most important secular state. 

300. The Reformers are called Protestants. The rapid 
progress of the revolution alarmed the upholders of the ancient 
Church. In the year 1529 there gathered an assembly (the 
Second Diet of Spires) to consider the matter. The action of 
the Catholic majority of this body took away from the Protestant 
princes and cities the right they had hitherto enjoyed of determin- 
ing what form of religion should be followed in their domafns, and 
forbade the teaching of certain of the new doctrines until a 
Church council should have pronounced authoritatively upon them. 

Six of the German princes and a large number of the cities of 
the Empire issued a formal protest against the action of the Diet, 
denying the power or right of a majority to bind the minority in 
matters of religion and conscience. Because of this protest, the 
reformers from this time began to be known as Protestants. 

301, The Catholic Reaction; its Causes and Agents. Even 
before the death of Luther, which occurred in the year 1546,- 

1 Albert (1490-1568), head of a branch of the family of Hohenzollern. 

2 After the death of Luther the leadership of the Reformation in Germany fell 
to Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560), one of Luther's friends and fellow-workers. 
Melanchthon's disposition was exactly the opposite of Luther's. He often reproved 
Luther for his indiscretion and vehemence, and was constantly laboring to effect, 
through mutual concessions, a reconciliation between the Catholics and Protestants. 



§302] DISUNION OF THE PROTESTANTS 277 

the Reformation had gained a strong foothold in most of the 
countries of Western Christendom, save- in Spain and Italy, and 
even in these parts the new doctrines had made some progress. 
But several causes now conspired to check the hitherto trium- 
phant advance of Protestantism and to enable the old Church to 
regain much of the ground that had been lost. Chief among 
these were the lack of concord among the Protestants, the Counter- 
Reform in the Catholic Church, the increased activity of the 
Inquisition, the rise of the Society of the Jesuits, and Spain's 
zealous championship of Catholicism. 

302. Disunion of the Protestants. Very early in their con- 
test with the Roman See the Protestants became divided into 
three mutually hostile sects, — Lutherans, Zwinglians, and 
Calvinists. 

The creed of the Lutherans came to prevail very generally in 
North Germany, and was received in Denmark, Norway, and 
Sweden. It also spread into the Netherlands, but there it was 
soon overshadowed by Calvinism. Of all the Protestant sects the 
Lutherans made the least departure from the Roman Catholic 
Church. 

The Zwinglians, followers of Huldreich Zwingli (i 484-1 531), 
differed from the Lutherans particularly in their views regarding 
the Eucharist and in the matter of church organization. Their 
creed became dominant in the greater part of German Switzer- 
land, and from there spread into southern Germany. 

The Calvinists were followers of John Calvin (i 509-1 564), a 
Frenchman by birth, who, forced to flee from France because 
of persecution, found a refuge at Geneva,^ which city he made 
the center of a movement rivaling in extent and historical im- 
portance that having its point of departure at Wittenberg. We 
can best remember the wide range of Calvinism and its remarkable 

1 Under the influence of Calvin, Geneva became a sort of theocratic state, with 
the reformer as a Protestant pope. The laws and regulations of this little city-state 
recall those of the later Puritan commonwealth in England. Calvinism was everywhere 
the same. It was a sort of revival of the theocracy of the ancient Hebrews. Calvin has 
been well called the "Prophet of the Old Covenant." His work entitled Instihitcs of the 
Christiait Religion is a masterly exposition of Calvinistic theology. 



278 



THE REFORMATION 



[§302 



influence upon the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries by keeping in mind that the French Huguenots, the 
Scotch Covenanters, the Dutch Netherlanders (in large part), the 
EngHsh Puritans, and the Pilgrim Fathers were all Calvinists.^ 

These great Protestant communions finally broke up into a 
large number of denominations or churches, each holding to 
some minor point of doctrine or adhering to some form of wor- 
ship disregarded by the others, yet all agreeing in the central 

doctrine of the Reformation, 
"justification by faith alone." 
Now, the contentions between 
these different sects were sharp 
and bitter. The liberal-minded 
reformer had occasion to lament 
the same state of things as that 
which troubled the Apostle 
Paul in the early days of Chris- 
tianity. One said, I am of 
Luther; another said, I am of 
Calvin; and another said, I am 
of Zwingli. Even Luther himself 
denounced Zwingli as a heretic; 
and the Calvinists would have 
no dealings with the Lutherans. 
The influence of these sectarian strifes and divisions upon the 
progress of the reform movement was most disastrous. They 
weakened the Protestant party in the presence of a united and 
vigilant enemy. They afforded the Catholics a strong and 
effective argument against the entire movement as tending to 
uncertainty, and discord. 




Fig. 58. John Calvix. (After a 
painting by Holbciii) 



1 All these are great names in the histoiy of poliilcal liberty. The undeniably 
favorable influence of Calvinism upon civil liberty is doubtless to be attributed not so 
much to its teachings — though the doctrine of the final authority of the individual con- 
science tended to undermine as well the divine right of kings as the supreme authority 
of the Pope — as to the democratic constitution of the Calvinistic churches. Each 
church forms a little democracy, and naturally ecclesiastical democracy has fostered 
political democracy. 



§303] THE CATHOLIC COUNTER-REFORM 279 

303. The Catholic Counter-Reform; the Council of Trent 

(1545-1563) ; Carlo Borromeo. x\s we have seen, it was the 
existence of acknowledged evils and scandals in the old Church 
that had contributed greatly to undermine its authority and to 
weaken its hold upon the reverence and the consciences of men. 
It was the correction of these evils and the removal of these 
scandals which did much to restore its lost influence and 
authority. 

This reform, which even before the rise of Protestantism had 
already begun within the Roman Catholic Church, was carried 
out in great measure by the memorable Council of Trent (1545- 
1563). This body, the most important Church assembly since 
that of Nicaea, a.d. 325, with the voice of authority passed upon 
all the points that had been raised by the reformers. It declared 
the traditions of the Church to be of equal authority with the 
Bible; it reasserted the divine character of the Papacy; it con- 
demned as heresy the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith 
alone. It made everything so clear that no one, not even a way- 
faring man, need err either in doctrine or in duty. It also de- 
manded that the lives of all priests and bishops should be an 
exemplification of Christian purity and morality. 

These measures of the council helped greatly to check the 
Protestant movement. The correction of the abuses that had had 
so much to do in causing the great schism smoothed the way for 
the return to the ancient Church of thousands who had become 
alarmed at the dangers into which society seemed to drift when 
once it cast loose from anchorage in the safe harbor of tradition 
and authority. 

The spirit in which the Council of Trent had done its work 
finds illustration in the exalted character and devoted life of 
the Italian reformer, Carlo Borromeo (153S-1584). In him the 
reforming spirit of the great council was incarnate. He became 
Archbishop of Milan, and took as his model the holy Ambrose, 
who, twelve centtiries before, in the corrupt times of the failing 
Roman Empire, had won sainthood in that same see. He reno- 
vated and restored the desecrated and deserted churches, reformed 



2 8o THE REFORMATION [§304 

the lax and dissolute lives of the clergy, restored discipline in the 
religious orders, and established schools and colleges. It was due 
largely to his zealous labors and to the happy contagion of his 
holy example that a new spiritual life was created in ISIilan and 
the regions round about, that popular veneration for the ancient 
Church was again evoked, that the progress of Protestantism in 
Italy was stayed, that the wavering were held firm in their 
allegiance to the Papacy, and that many who had already been 
led away by the Protestant "heresy" were brought back to the 
ancient fold. 

304. The Inquisition. The Roman Catholic Church, having 
purified itself and defined clearly its articles of faith, demanded 
of all a more implicit obedience than hitherto. The Inquisition 
now assumed new activity, and heresy was sternly dealt with. 
The tribunal was assisted in the execution of its sentences by 
the secular authorities in all the Romance countries, but out- 
side of these it was not generally recognized by the temporal 
princes, though it did succeed in establishing itself for a time in 
the Netherlands and in some parts of Germany. Death, usually 
by burning, and loss of property were the penalty of obstinate 
heresy. Without doubt the Inquisition did much to check the 
advance of the Reformation in southern Europe, aiding especially 
in holding Italy and Spain obedient to the ancient Church. 

At this point, in connection with the persecutions of the In- 
quisition, we should not fail to recall that in the sixteenth century 
a refusal to conform to the established worship was regarded by 
the great majority of Protestants, as well as of Catholics, as a 
species of treason against society, and was dealt with accordingly. 
Thus at Geneva we iind Calvin bending all his energies to the 
trial and execution of Servetus, because he published views that 
the Calvinists thought heretical; at Rome we see Giordano Bruno 
burned at the stake because of his disbelief in certain Roman 
Catholic doctrines, and in England we see the Anglican Protes- 
tants waging the most cruel, bitter, and persistent persecutions 
not only against the Catholics but also against all Protestants 
who refused to conform to the Established Church. 



§305] 



SOCIETY OF THE JESUITS 



281 



305. The Society of the Jesuits; Ignatius of Loyola; 
Francis Xavier. The Society of the Jesuits, or the Company 
of Jesus, was another most powerful auxiliary concerned in the 
reestablishment of the threatened authority of the Papal See. 
The founder of the fraternity was Ignatius of Loyola (1491- 
1556), a native of Spain. Ignatius was the embodiment of 
Spanish religious zeal. His object was to form a society the 
devotion and energy of whose members should meet the ardor 
and activity of the reformers. 
The new society was instituted 
by a papal bull in 1 540. 

Ignatius before he became a 
priest was a soldier, and it was 
this circumstance which lent a 
military cast to his society. In- 
deed, the military principle so 
characterizes it that it has been 
described as "a military organi- 
zation for religious purposes." 
This predominance of the mili- 
tary principle in the society 
should be borne carefully in 
mind in any study of the 
character and the activity of the 

Jesuits. Like the soldier, each member of the society is required 
to submit his own will to that of his superior and is taught to 
regard self-renunciation and obedience as cardinal virtues. 

It was particularly as educators that the Jesuits made their in- 
fluence felt upon society. Their aim here was to fill the world 
with schools and colleges, just as a conquered country might be 
occupied with military garrisons. Ignatius left behind him a 
full hundred colleges and seminaries; within a century and a 
half after his death the Order had founded over seven hundred. 

As the well-disciplined, watchful, and uncompromising foes of 
the Protestants, now divided into many and often hostile sects, 
the Jesuits did so much to bring about a reaction that Macaulay 




Fig. 59. Ignatius of Loyola 
(After a painting by Rubens) 



2 82 THE REFORMATION [§306 

declares, "The history of the Jesuits is the history of the Catholic 
Reaction." It was largely through their direct or indirect agency 
that Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and South Germany, after they 
had been invaded by Protestantism and in a greater or less 
degree drawn away from the old faith, were won back to the 
Roman Catholic Church and again bound by ties stronger than 
ever to the Papacy. By the end of the sixteenth century this 
great work of recovery had been in the main accomplished. This 
regaining of these debatable countries for Catholicism constitutes 
one of the most important matters in the religious history of 
Europe. 

And not only did the labors of the Jesuits contribute thus 
greatly to the retrieving of the papal fortunes in Europe, but they 
were also instrumental in extending the authority and spreading 
the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church into all other parts 
of the world. Most distinguished of all the missionaries of the 
society to pagan lands was the saintly Francis Xavier (1506- 
1552), known as the "Apostle of the Indies." His labors in India, 
Japan, and other lands of the Far East were attended with 
astonishing results. 

306. Spain's Zealous Championship of Catholicism. Just as 
England became the champion and the bulwark of Protestantism, 
so did Spain become the champion and the bulwark of Catholi- 
cism. The Spanish sovereigns, as we shall see, constituted them- 
selves the guardians of Catholic orthodoxy, and put forth all their 
strength to uproot the reformed faith not only in their own 
domains but also in other lands. Their strenuous efforts to 
reestablish the old religious unity caused them to become most 
important instruments of the Catholic Restoration. 

307. The Hundred Years of Religious Wars. The action 
taken by the Council of Trent made impossible a reconciliation 
between the two parties. The middle of the sixteenth century 
had not yet been reached before the increasing bitterness of their 
controversy led to an appeal to force. Then followed a hundred 
years of religious wars. During this time neither party laid aside 
the sword. In this protracted combat Protestantism was fighting 



§308j rOLITICAL RESULTS OF THE REFORM 283 

desperately for the right to live; the Papacy was fighting to put 
down secession, to force the seceded states back into the old 
ecclesiastical empire, to restore the broken unity of Christendom. 

In the chapters immediately following this we shall trace in 
broad outline the vicissitudes in the fortunes of the rival creeds 
in the leading European countries. To what we have here said 
concerning the beginnings of the Revolution we will in a closing 
section add only a few words touching its results. 

308. Political Results of the Reformation: the Separation 
from Rome and What this meant. The outcome of the 
Protestant Revolution as a revolution was, very broadly stated, 
the separation from the Roman Catholic Church of North Ger- 
many, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, England, and Scotland, along 
with parts of Switzerland and of the Netherlands, — in the main, 
nations predominantly Teutonic in race or in language. The 
great Romance nations, namely, France, Spain, and Italy, to- 
gether with South Germany, Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, and 
Ireland, adhered to the ancient Church, or, if for a period shaken 
in their loyalty, ultimately returned to their old allegiance.^ 

What this separation from Rome meant in the political realm 
is well stated by the historian Seebohm: '^It was the claiming by 
the civil power in each nation of those rights which the Pope had 
hitherto claimed within it as head of the great ecclesiastical em- 
pire. The clergy and monks had hitherto been regarded more or 
less as foreigners, — that is, as subjects of the Pope's ecclesiastical 
empire. Where there was a revolt from Rome the allegiance of 
these persons to the Pope was annulled, and the civil power 
claimed as full a sovereignty over them as it had over its lay 
subjects. Matters relating to marriage and wills still for the 
most part remained under ecclesiastical jurisdiction, but then, as 
the ecclesiastical courts themselves became national courts and 
ceased' to be Roman or papal, all these matters came under the 
control of the civil power." 

1 It is because the Reformation was espoused so generally by the Teutonic peoples 
and Catholicism adhered to so generally by the Latin nations that Protestantism is 
sometimes spoken of as Teutonic Christianity and Catholicism as Latin Christianity. 



284 THE REFORMATION [§309 

In a word, the secession meant that the nations thus breaking 
the ties which formerly united them to Rome now became — 
what they were not during mediaeval times — absolutely inde- 
pendent or sovereign powers, self-centered and self-governed in 
their ecclesiastical as well as in their political life. 

309. Religious and Moral Results of the Reform Movement. 
In a spiritual or religious point of view, this severance by the 
northern nations of the bonds that formerly united them to the 
ecclesiastical empire of Rome meant a transfer of their allegiance 
from the Chnrch to the Bible. The decrees of popes and the 
decisions of Church councils were no longer to be regarded as 
having divine and binding force; the Scriptures alone were to 
be held as possessing divine and infallible authority, and, the- 
oretically, this rule and standard of faith and practice each 
individual was to interpret for himself. 

Another important result of the Reformation was a certain 
impulse given the world towards religious toleration. It is true 
that the reformer's, in spite of their insistence for themselves 
upon the right of private judgment in religious matters, did not 
in practice concede this right to others, and when they had the 
power became, very inconsistently, most zealous persecutors. 
They believed with the Catholics that heresy should be punished, 
only they defined heresy differently. Throughout the sixteenth 
century intolerance, in the words of the historian Lingard, was 
" a part of the public law of Christendom." Nevertheless, the 
proclamation of the principle of private judgment in religious 
affairs, through a logical necessity, came ultimately to exert a 
favorable influence upon toleration; for you cannot accord to a 
man the right to form his own judgment respecting a matter 
and at the same time affix a penalty to his reaching any save a 
prescribed conclusion. Consequently among the various agencies, 
such as modern science, the advance of the world in general 
intelligence, and closer intercourse among the nations, which 
during the past three centuries have brought in the beneficent 
principle of religious toleration, the Reformation of the sixteenth 
century must be given a prominent place. 



REFERENCES 285 

Selections from the Sources. First Principles of the Reformation (ed. by 
Wace and Buchheim). Read Luther's "Address to the NobiHty of the German 
Nation." The address makes a vivid revelation not only of the religious situa- 
tion in Germany at this time but also of the character of the man who here 
makes himself the spokesman of the German nation. Whitcomb, M., Lite7-a>y 
Source-Book of the German Renaissance. Translations a7id Reprints, vol. ii, No. 6, 
"Period of the Early Reformation in Germany"; and vol. iii, No. 3, "Period 
of the Later Reformation." Robinson, J. H., Readings in European History, 
vol. ii, chaps, xxiv-xxvi. 

Secondary Works. Beard, C., Martin Luther and the Reforniation in 
Ge7-tnany. KosTLiN, J., Life of Luther. Emerton, E., Desiderius E^-asmus. 
For a wrider survey, from the Protestant point of view, of the reform move- 
ment: Fisher, G. P., The Reformation ; H.ausser, L., The Fej-iod of the Refo7-- 
matio7i ; and Seebohm, F., The Era of the Protesta/tt Revolution. Hulme, 
E. ]VL, The Rc7iaissa7ice, the Protestant Revolutio/i, a/id the Catholic Refo/i?iaiio/i 
171 Continental Etcrope (Rev. Ed.), chaps, x-xxx. For the history of the move- 
ment from the Catholic side: Spalding, M. J., The History of the Protesta7tt 
Rcfo 7-771 at io/t. The Ca7nbridge Mode7yi History, vol. i, chap, xix, and vol. ii, 
chaps, iv-viii. Robinson, J. H., A7i Lntrodicction to the History of Weste7-7t 
Europe, chaps, xxv and xxvi. Froude, J. A., Lectures 071 the Couticil of Trent. 
Hughes, T., Loyola a7id the Educational System ofthefesuits. Symonds, J. A., 
The Catholic Reactio7i, vol. i. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Luther at the Diet of Worms : Vedder, H. G., 
The Refo7-/natio7i /« Gerj7ia7iy, pp. 137-164 ; Freytag, G., Marti7i Luihe7; pp. 50- 
59. 2. Erasmus at Oxford: Seebohm, F., The Oxford Reforme7-s, pp. 94-116; 
Emerton, E., Deside7-itis Eras7nus, chap. iii. 3. The Counter-Reformation : 
Seignobos, C, History of Alediaval a7id Modern Civilizatio7t, chap. xxi. 4. Luther 
and the German Bible : Smith, P., The Life and Letters of Marti/i Luther, 
chap, xxiii. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN ; HER RELATION TO THE 
CATHOLIC REACTION 

L REIGN OF THE EMPEROR CHARLES V (1519-1556) 

310. Introductory. . In the year 1 500 there was born in the 
city of Ghent, in the Netherlands, a prince who was destined to 
play a great part in the history of the sixteenth century. This 
was Charles, son of Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, 
and Joanna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, — 
later to be known to fame as the Emperor Charles V. 

Charles was the fortunate heir of four royal houses — the 
houses of Austria, Burgundy, Castile, and Aragon — which had 
been brought together by politic marriage alliances.^ Before 
Charles had completed his nineteenth year there were heaped 
upon his head, through the removal of his ancestors by death, 
the crowns of the four dynasties. 

But great as was the number of the hereditary crowns of the 
young prince, there was straightway added to them (in 15 19), 
by the vote of the Electors of Germany, the crown of the Holy 
Roman Empire. After this election he was known as the Emperor 
Charles V\ hitherto he had borne the title of Carlos I of Spain. 

311. The Balance of Power is disturbed by Spain. When 
Charles VIII of France, just at the close of the Middle Ages, 
made his memorable invasion of Italy, the other states became 
alarmed lest France should gain an undue weight in European 
affairs, and to prevent this formed an alliance to keep France 

1 Castile and Aragon were joined by the marriage of Ferdinand of Aragon and 
Isabella of Castile ; Austria and Burgundy, by the marriage of Maximilian of Austria to 
Mary, the daughter and heiress of Charles the Bold, the last Duke of Burgundy ; then 
these double lines were brought together by the marriage of Joanna, daughter of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, to Philip, son of Maximilian and Mary. 

286 




1 •^ttaB-aa 

EUllOPE ^yr,ois 

AT THE ACCESSION OF THE EMPEKOR <r'5b»=. 

CHAKLES V 

1519 

Boundary of Empire thus: ■■^■l 
50 100 200 800 400 



^%f Syracuse 

Malta*»y 
(To Spain) ^ 



Scale of Miles. 



Longitude West 




Longitude East 10 from Greenwich 



§ 312] CHARLES V AND THE REFORMATION 



287 



within her proper boundaries (sect. 217). This was practically 
the origin of the celebrated system of the balance of power 
among the European states/ 

From that time to the present this balance of power idea has 
lain at the bottom of much European diplomacy. It has been 
the concern of statesmen to see to it that no one of the nations 
should acquire an overweight of power or influence and thereby 
endanger the independence of the others. But notwithstanding 
this interested vigilance there has ^• 

been a constant tendency to a dis- 
turbance of the equilibrium of the 
European system of states through 
the overgrowth of this or that mem- 
ber of it. The alliances formed, 
treaties solemnly sworn to, and 
wars fought to prevent such dis- 
turbance of the balance of power 
or to restore the equilibrium already 
impaired make up a great part of 
the political history of Europe in 
modern times. 

Now in the sixteenth century it 
was the overshadowing greatness of 
Spain that aroused the fears of her 
neighbors and very largely determined the policies and actions of 
these states. Here we have the key to much of the political 
history of the reign of the Emperor Charles V and of that of his 
son and successor on the Spanish throne, Philip II. 

312. Charles V and the Reformation. But important as is the 
political side of Charles' reign, it is his relation to the Lutheran 
movement which constitutes for us the significant feature of his 
life and work. Fortunately for the Roman Catholic Church, the 
young Emperor placed himself at the head of the Catholic party, 

1 There was, however, no general official recognition of such a doctrine until i66S, 
when the Triple Alliance (Sir William Temple's Treaty) was formed between tlie 
English, the Dutch, and the Swedes to prevent Louis XIV from making himself 
master of the Low Countries, 




Fig. 60.' Emperor Charles V 
(After a painting by Holheiii) 



288 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN [§313 

and during his own reign not only employed the strength and re- 
sources of his empire in extirpating the heresy of the reformers but 
also transmitted this policy to his successors upon the Spanish 
throne. 

Charles, in declaring for the old faith and against the new, 
was swayed both by conviction and by considerations of policy.. 
Although suspicious and jealous of the Papacy, he was strongly 
attached to the Roman Catholic Church and creed and sincerely 
believed that the first duty of a Christian prince was to" uproot 
heresy in his dominions. Then, again, as head of the Empire, 
Charles was impelled in the same direction. For he held the 
prevalent view of his age, that no state could tolerate two creeds, 
that political unity required religious unity; and this maxim 
he applied not only to Spain and his other hereditary possessions 
but to his dominions as a whole, and, as we shall see, tried to 
suppress the reformed faith in Germany as well as elsewhere. 

313. His Two Chief Enemies. Had Charles been free from 
the outset to devote all his energies to the work of suppressing the 
Lutheran movement, it is difficult to see what could have saved 
the reform doctrines within his dominions from extirpation. But 
fortunately for the cause of the reformers, Charles' attention, 
during all the first part of his reign, was drawn away from the 
serious consideration of Church questions by the attacks upon his 
dominions of two of the most powerful monarchs of the times, — 
Francis I (151 5-1 547) of France, and Solyman the Magnificent 
( 1 520-1 566), Sultan of Turkey. Time and again, when Charles 
was inclined to proceed to severe measures against the Protestant 
princes of Germany, the threatening movements of one or both 
of these enemies, at times acting in concert and alliance, forced 
him to postpone his proposed crusade against heretics for a 
campaign against foreign foes. 

314. Rivalry and Wars between Charles and Francis (1521- 
1544). Francis was the rival of Charles in the contest for the 
imperial dignity. When the Electors of Germany conferred the 
title upon the Spanish monarch, Francis was sorely disappointed, 
and during all the remainder of his reign kept up a jealous and 




o 

>^ 

o 






h 



CI, 
OJ 

P -6 
_ "o 



u 






§315] WARS BETWEEN FRANCIS AND CHARLES 289 

almost incessant warfare with Charles, whose enormous posses- 
sions now nearly surrounded the French kingdom/ Italy was the 
field of much of the fighting, as the securing of dominion in that 
peninsula was a chief aim of each of the rivals.- 

315. Results of the Wars between Francis and Charles. 
The direct and indirect consequences of the protracted combat 
between Francis and Charles were many and far-reaching. 

First, Protestantism was given time to intrench itself so firmly 
in North Germany and in other countries as to render ineffectual 
all later efforts for its destruction. 

Second, by preventing united action on the part of the Christian 
princes, these quarrels were the occasion of the severe losses 
which Christendom during this period suffered at the hands of the 
Ottoman Turks. Hungary was ravaged with fire and sword, 
Rhodes was captured, and the Mediterranean made almost a 
Turkish lake. 

Third, these wars, having Italy as their chief theater, were 
a- frightful scourge to that land and blighted there all the fair 
promises of the Renaissance; but at the same time the storm 
wafted the precious seeds of the revived arts and letters beyond 
the mountains into France and other northern lands. The French 
Renaissance dates from these Italian wars. 

316. Persecution of the Waldenses by Francis (1545). The 
cessation of the wars between Francis and Charles left each free 

1 Before entering upon war with Charles, Francis cast about for an ally. The young 
king of England, Henry VI 1 1,, seemed the most desirable friend. He accordingly 
invited Henry to a conference in France, at which was to be considered the matter of 
an alliance against the Emperor. The two kings, each attended by a magnificent train 
of courtiers, met near Calais (1520). The meeting is known in history as "The Field of 
the Cloth of Gold" because of the prodigal richness of the costumes and appointments 
of the chiefs and their attendants. " Many," says a contemporary writer, " bore thither 
their mills, their forests, and their meadows on their backs." Nothing came of the 
interview, and Charles finally won Henry over to his side. 

" Table of Wars 

First War (ended by Peace Third War (ended by Truce 

of Madrid) 1521-1526 of Nice) 1536-1538 

Second War — chief event the Fourth War (ended by Peace 

sack of Rome (ended by of Crespy) ...... 1542-1544 

Ladies' Peace) 1527-1529 



290 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN [§317 

to give his attention to his heretical subjects. And both had work 
enough on hand; for while the king and the Emperor nad been 
fighting each other, the doctrines of the reformers had been spread- 
ing rapidly in all directions and among all classes. 

The severest blow dealt the heretics of his kingdom by Francis 
fell upon the Vaudois, or Waldenses/ the simple, inoffensive in- 
habitants of a number of hamlets in the Alpine regions of Pied- 
mont and Provence, These people during the later mediaeval 
time had fallen into what the Church regarded as heretical ways, 
and just now they were mingling with their own heresies those of 
the Protestant reformers. Thousands were put to death by the 
sword, thousands more were burned at the stake. At a later 
time other persecutions fell upon them, until finally only a miser- 
able remnant, who found an asylum among the mountains, were 
left to hand down their faith to modern times. 

317. Charles' Wars with the Protestant German Princes. 
Charles, on his part, turned his attention to the reformers in Ger- 
many. Inspired by the religious motives and convictions of which 
we have already spoken, and apprehensive, further, of the effect 
upon his authority in Germany of the growth there of such an 
empire within an empire as the Protestant princes and free cities 
— now united in a union known as the Schmalkaldic League — 
were becoming, he resolved to crush the whole reform movement. 

Accordingly, in the very year that Luther died (1546), the 
Emperor, aided by the German Catholics, attacked the Protestant 
league. He was at first successful, but in the end the war proved 
the most disastrous and humiliating to him of any in which he 
had engaged. Severe defeats of his armies finally constrained him 
to give up his undertaking to make all his German subjects think 
alike in matters of religion. 

318. The Religious Peace of Augsburg (1555). In the cele- 
brated Diet of Augsburg, convened in 1555 to compose the dis- 
tracted affairs of the German states, it was arranged and agreed 
that every prince should be allowed to choose between the Roman 

i.So called from the founder of the sect, Peter Waldo, or Pierre de Vaux, who lived 
in the later years of the twelfth century. 



§319] . CHARLES' ABDICATION 291 

Catholic religion and the Augsburg Confession/ and should have 
the right to make his religion the religion of his people.- This, it 
will be noted, was simply toleration as concerns princes or gov- 
ernments. The people individually had no freedom of choice; 
every subject must follow his prince, and think and believe as 
he thought and believed. 

To this article, however, the Diet made one important excep- 
tion. The Catholics insisted that ecclesiastical princes, that is, 
bishops and abbots, on becoming Protestants should surrender to 
the Roman Catholic Church their offices and revenues; and this 
important clause, under the name of the Ecclesiastical Reserva- 
tion, was finally made a part of the treaty. 

It is important that this Treaty of Augsburg should be kept 
carefully in mind, for the reason that it was through mutual mis- 
understandings of its provisions and violations of its articles by 
both parties that the way was paved for the terrible Thirty Years' 
War (Chapter XXV). 

■319. Charles* Abdication. While the Diet of Augsburg was ar- 
ranging the religious peace, the Emperor Charles was enacting the 
part of a second Diocletian. There had long been forming in his 
mind the purpose of spending his last days in monastic seclusion. 
The disappointing issue of his contest with the Protestant princes 
of Germany, the weight of advancing years, together with menac- 
ing troubles which began 'Uo thicken like dark clouds about the 
evening of his reign," now led the Emperor to carry this resolu- 
tion into effect. Accordingly he abdicated in favor of his son 
Philip the crown of the Netherlands^ (i5S5) and that of Spain 
and its colonies (1556), and then retired to the monastery of 
Yuste, situated in a secluded region in western Spain, where he 
passed the remaining short term of his life. 

1 The Augsburg Confession was the formula of belief of the adherents of Luther. 
The Peace of Augsburg made no provision for the Zwinglians and Calvinists (sect. 302). 

2 The free imperial cities were not given this right. Within them each party must 
tolerate the other. 

3 Philip had received the crown of Naples the preceding year (1554), in order that 
his titular dignity might be the same as that of Queen Mary of England, to whom he 
was that year united in marriage. The imperial crown went to Charles' brother, the 
Archduke Ferdinand. 



2 92 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN [§320 

There is a tradition which tells how Charles, after vainly en- 
deavoring to make some clocks that he had about him at Yuste 
run together, made the following reflection: "How foolish I have 
been to think I could make all men believe alike about religion, 
when here I cannot make even two clocks keep the same time." 

This story is probably mythical. Charles seems never to have 
doubted either the practicability or the policy of securing uni- 
formity of belief by force. While in retirement at Yuste he 
expressed the deepest regret that he did not burn Luther at 
Worms. He was constantly urging Philip to use greater severity 
in dealing with his heretic subjects, and could scarcely restrain 
himself from leaving his retreat in order to engage personally in 
the work of eradicating the "pestilent doctrines" which he heard 
were spreading in Spain. 

II. SPAIN UNDER PHILIP 11 (1556-1598) 

320. Philip's Character and his Principles of Government. 

Philip, unlike his father, was a representative Spaniard. He typi- 
fied and embodied in himself the traits, ideals, and aspirations 
of the Spanish race, just as Luther typified and embodied those of 
the German race. His mind was the mind, his conscience was the 
conscience, of the Spanish people. 

Like the true Spaniard, Philip possessed a deeply religious 
nature. He believed as sincerely as ever did the Puritan Crom- 
well that he was God's chosen instrument for the working out 
of his eternal designs. But in order that he might do what God 
would have done in the world, he conceived it to be necessary 
that he should have absolute power. A necessary basis of this 
absolute power, in Philip's conception, was religious unity. Dis- 
union in the Church meant disunion in the State. Hence one of 
Philip's instruments of government was the Inquisition. He em- 
ployed it in the suppression of heresy, not simply because he was 
a sincere Roman Catholic and believed that heresy was willful sin 
and should be sternly dealt with, but primarily because heresy, 
in his view, was rebellion against the State. 



§321] 



CRUSADE AGAINST THE MORISCOS 



293 



Philip possessed unusual administrative ability. He was an 
incessant worker and busied himself with the endless details of 
government. He left nothing to the discretion of others. He did 
everything himself. His secretaries were mere clerks. He even 
regulated, or tried to regulate, the private affairs of his subjects, — 
told them how to dress, when they might use carriages, and how 
and where to educate their children. Under this system there 
was in the kingdom but one brain to 
plan and one will to direct. All local 
freedom and all individual initiative 
were crushed out. This fatally cen- 
tralized system of government Philip 
bequeathed to his successors, and 
thus contributed greatly to determine 
the unhappy destiny of the Spanish 
people. 

As the most important matters of 
Philip's reign — namely, his war 
against the revolted Netherlands and 
his attempt upon England with his 
"Invincible Armada" — belong prop- 
erly to the respective histories of 
England and the Netherlands, and 

will be treated of in connection with the affairs of those countries, 
we shall give here very little space to the history of the period.^ 

321. Philip's Crusade against the Moriscos (1570-1571). It 
will be recalled that upon the conquest of Granada in 1492 by 
Ferdinand and Isabella, the Moors were assured protection in 

1 Taking up his father's quarrel with France, Philip defeated the French in two 
great battles in France (at St. Quentin, 1557, and then at Gravelines, 1557). The war 
was ended by the Peace of Cateau-Cambresis (1559). The monument built by Philip to 
commemorate the victory of St. Quentin is strikingly illustrative of his character. 
Before the battle he vowed to erect to St. Lawrence the most splendid monastery the 
world had ever seen, if he would but give success to his arms. Philip kept his vow 
faithfully. A few years after the battle he laid, near the city of Madrid, the foundation 
of the famous Escorial, — "a palace, a monastery, and a mausoleum." The edifice was 
built in the form of a gridiron, from the circumstance that St. Lawrence suffered 
martyrdom by being broiled on such an instrument. It is the Westminster Abbey of 
Spain ; it holds the ashes of rr(0$t of the Spanish sovereigns from Charles V onward. 




Fig. 61. Philip II. (After a 
painting by Titian) 



2 94 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN [§322 

all civil rights and granted religious freedom. But the Emperor 
Charles V broke faith with them and compelled them to embrace 
Christianity. They submitted to baptism, and outwardly con- 
formed to the requirements of the Church, but secretly they held 
to their own faith. 

Philip conceived it to be his duty to impose upon the Moriscos 
— thus they were called after their conversion — conditions that 
should thoroughly obliterate all traces of their ancient faith and 
manners. So he issued a decree that they should no longer wear 
their native garb or use their native tongue, and that they should 
give their children Christian names and send them to Christian 
schools. A determined revolt followed. 

The uprising was suppressed with cruel severity, and then, 
because there was danger that if left in these coast regions they 
might open the gates of the country to the INIoslems of the Medi- 
terranean, an order was issued which condemned all the Moriscos 
of Granada to deportation to districts in the center and the north 
of the peninsula. The order was relentlessly carried out. Men, 
women, and children, all who were of Moorish blood, were carried 
off into hopeless exile. 

322. Defeat of the Turkish Fleet at Lepanto (1571). At the 
very moment almost that Philip was dealing Spain a fatal blow 
by his cruel treatment of his Morisco subjects, he was rendering 
a great service to Christian civilization at large. This he did by 
helping to stay the progress of the Ottoman Turks in the Mediter- 
ranean. They had captured the important island of Cyprus and 
had assaulted the Hospitalers at Malta, which island had been 
saved from falling into the hands of the infidels only by the 
splendid conduct of the Knights. All Christendom was becoming 
alarmed. An alliance was formed, embracing the Pope, the 
Venetians, and Philip H. An immense fleet was equipped and 
put under the command of Don John of Austria, Philip's half 
brother. 

The Christian fleet met the Turkish squadron in the Gulf of 
Lepanto, on the western coast of Greece. The battle was un- 
equaled by anything the Mediterranean had seen since the naval 



§323] THE DEATH OF PHILIP 295 

encounters of the Romans and Carthaginians in the First Punic 
War. The Ottoman fleet was almost totally destroyed. Thou- 
sands of Christian captives, who were found chained to the oars 
of the Turkish galleys, were liberated. All Christendom rejoiced 
as when Jerusalem was captured by the first crusaders. 

The battle of Lepanto holds an important place in history 
because it marks the turning point of the long struggle between 
the Mohammedans and Christians, which had now been going 
on for nearly one thousand years. Though the Moslems had 
received many checks, there really was no time previous to this 
great victory when the Mohammedan power, represented first 
by the Arabs and afterwards by the Turks, did not hang like a 
threatening cloud along the southern or eastern border of Chris- 
tendom. The victory of Lepanto robbed the cloud of its terrors. 
The Ottoman Turks, though they afterwards made progress in 
some quarters, never recovered the prestige they lost in that 
disaster, and their power thenceforward steadily declined. 

'323. The Death of Philip (1598). In the year 1588 Philip 
made his memorable attempt with the so-called "Invincible 
Armada" upon England, at this time the stronghold of Prot- 
estantism. As we shall see a little later, he failed utterly in the 
undertaking. Ten years after this, death ended his reign. 

324. Later Events: the Expulsion of the Moriscos (1609- 
I610) ; Loss of the Netherlands. From the death of Philip II 
Spain declined in power, reputation, and influence. This was 
due very largely to the bigotry and tyranny of her rulers. Thus 
under Philip III (i 598-1 621) a severe loss, one from which they 
never recovered, was inflicted upon the manufactures and other 
industries of the country by the expulsion of the Moriscos. 

Philip II, it will be recalled, had deported the whole Morisco 
population of Granada to inland provinces. Now all Spain was to 
be cleared absolutely of the "evil race." Not one was to be left 
upon Spanish soil. Philip really believed that this driving out of 
the misbelievers would be a service pleasing to God, even as was 
the driving out of the Canaanites from Palestine by the Hebrews. 
But he was actuated also by other motives in expelling the 



2 96 THE ASCENDANCY OF SPAIN [§325 

unhappy Moriscos. They were accused, and not without ground, 
so desperate had oppression and persecution rendered them, of 
plotting with their co-religionists, the African Moors and the Otto- 
man Turks, for the invasion of Spain and thus endangering the 
peace and unity of the land. 

Accordingly during the years 1609 ^^'^ 16 10 all persons of 
Moorish descent — more than half a million of the most intel- 
ligent, skillful, and industrious inhabitants of the peninsula- 
were driven into exile, chiefly to North Africa. The empty 
dwellings and jieglected fields of once populous and gardenlike 
provinces told how fatal a blow Spain had inflicted upon herself. 
She had achieved religious unity ^ — but at a great price. 

At the very moment that Spain was being so deeply wounded 
in the peninsula she received an incurable hurt in her outside 
possessions. In the so-called Truce of 1609 (sect. 370) she was 
forced virtually to recognize the independence of the Protestant 
Netherlands, whose revolt against the tyranny of Philip II has 
been mentioned. In the secession of these provinces Spain lost 
her most valuable dependency.^ 

. 325. Conclusion. Spain now disappears as a power of the 
first rank from the stage of history. The historian Laurent finely 
compares her withdrawal from the theater of great affairs to 
Charles V's retirement into the cloistral solitude of Yuste. "In 
the sixteenth century," he says, "Spain shone in the first rank 
among the great powers; she filled the Old and the New World 
with her name; then she retired into isolation, as Charles V at 
the end of his agitated life retired within the solitude of a 
monastery." - 

1 The loss of the Netherlands was followed in 1640 by the loss of Portugal. During 
the latter part of the seventeenth century Spain was involved in disastrous wars with 
France, and suffered a great decline in her population. After the revolt of her American 
colonies, in the early part of the nineteenth century, and her cession to the United States 
of Florida (in 18 ig), Spain was almost shorn — she still held Cuba and a few other 
patches of territory scattered about the world — of those rich and magnificent colonial 
possessions which had been her pride in the time of her ascendancy. The last blow to 
her colonial dominion was given by the .United States in 1898. 

2 Etudes sur PHisioire de PHumanite, tome ix, p. 64. 



§ 325] REFERENCES 297 

Even the very brief review which we have made of her sixteenth- 
century history will not fail to have revealed at least two of the 
main causes of her failure and quick decadence : first, a false 
imperial policy in Europe which involved her in endless and 
fruitless wars; and second, political despotism and religious 
intolerance. 

Selections from the Sources. Translations and Reprints, vol. iii, No. 3, 
" Period of the Later Reformation " (contains short selections bearing on 
several of the matters covered by this chapter). 

Secondary Works. Robertson, W., History of the Reign of the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth, 3 vols. Prescott, W. H., History of the Reign of Philip the 
Second, 3 vols, (this and the preceding work by Robertson are reckoned 
among the classics of historical literature). Armstrong, E., The Eviperor 
Charles V, 2 vols. Stirling-Maxwell, W., The Cloister Life of the Emperor 
Charles the Fifth. Hume, M. A. S., The Spanish People, chaps, ix-xi; Spain: 
its Greatness and Decay; and Philip II of Spain. Lea, H. C, The Moriscos of 
Spain: their Convcrsio7i and Expulsion. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The abdication of Charles the Fifth: Pres- 
cott, \V., History of the Reign of Philip the Second, vol. i, chap, i ; Motley, J. L., 
The Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. i, chap. i. 2. Causes of Philip's failure : 
Hume, W. A. S., Philip II of Spain, pp. 1-6. 3. Results of the expulsion of 
the Moriscos from Spain : Lea, H. C, The Moriscos of Spain, pp. 394-401. 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE TUDORS AND THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 

(1485-1603) 

I. INTRODUCTORY 

326. The Tudor Period. The Tudor period ^ was an eventful 
and stirring time for the English people. It witnessed among 
them great progress in art, science, and trade, and a literary out- 
burst such as the world had not seen since the best days of 
Athens. But the great event of the period was the Reformation. 
It was under the sovereigns of this house that England was 
severed from papal Rome, and Protestantism became firmly 
established in the island. To tell how these great results were 
effected will be our chief aim in the present chapter. 

327. The English Reformation First a Revolt and then a 
Reform; its Premonitions. The Reformation in England was, 
more distinctly than elsewhere, a double movement. First, Eng- 
land was separated violently from the ecclesiastical empire of 
Rome, but without any essential change being made in doctrines 
and in ritual, or in form of worship. This was accomplished 
under Henry VIII. 

Second, the English Church, thus rendered independent of 
Rome, gradually changed its teachings and its ritual. This was 
effected chiefly under Edward VI. So the movement was first a 
revolt and then a reform. 

In so far as it was a secession movement, it was practically 
merely the culmination of an age-long controversy between Eng- 
land and the Papacy.- " For three hundred years," in the words 

1 The Tudor sovereigns were Henry VII (14S5-1509), Henry VIII (1509-1547), 
Edward VI (1547-1553), Mary (1553-1558), and Elizabeth (1558-1603). 

2 For episodes in this protracted quarrel see The Martyrdom of Thomas Becket 
(sect. 18S), Pope Innocent III and King John of England (sect. 148), and The Revolt 
of Germany and England (sect. 152). 

298 



§328] REIGN OF HENRY VII 299 

of the historian Green, " the Pope had been the standing grievance 
of Englishmen." Time and again the English Parliament had 
passed acts declaring that the Pope should not do this and should 
not do that in England. It was this sensitiveness of Englishmen 
respecting the jurisdiction in England of a foreign potentate that 
made it so comparatively easy for Henry VIII, during the first 
stir and excitement of the reform movement, to cut England loose 
from the papal empire. 

II. THE REIGN OF HENRY VII (1485-1509) 

328. Benevolences. The besetting sins of Henry VII, the first 
of the Tudors, were avarice and a love of despotic rule. One 
device adopted by the king for wringing money from his wealthy 
subjects was what were euphemistically termed "Benevolences." 
Magna Carta forbade the king to impose taxes without the con- 
sent of the Common Council. But Henry did not like to convene 
Parliament, as he wished to rule like the kings of the Continent, 
guided simply by his own free will. So benevolences were made 
to take the place of regular taxes. These were nothing more nor 
less than gifts extorted from the well-to-do by moral pressure. 

One of Henry's ministers. Cardinal Morton, was particularly 
successful in his appeals for gifts of this kind. To those who 
lived splendidly he would say that it was very evident they were 
quite able to make a generous donation to their sovereign; while to 
others who lived in a narrow and pinched way he would represent 
that their economical mode of life must have made them wealthy. 
This teasing dilemma received the name of " Morton's' fork." 

329. Maritime Discoveries. It was during this reign that 
great geographical discoveries enlarged the boundaries of the 
world. Columbus announced to Europe the existence of land to 
the west; Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope 
and found a water path to the East Indies. 

In the year of this last enterprise Henry commissioned John 
Cabot, a Venetian navigator doing business in England, and his 
sons to make explorations in the western and northern seas. In 



300 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§330 

his westward voyage Cabot ran against the American continent 
somewhere in the vicinity of Newfoundland and took possession 
of the country in the name of the English sovereign (1497), He 
was probably the first European to look upon the mainland of the 
New World, for Columbus up to this time had seen only the 
islands of the Gulf of Mexico and of the Caribbean Sea. 

Upon this discovery and other alleged discoveries and explora- 
tions of John Cabot and his son Sebastian the English based 
their claim to the whole of the American coast from Labrador 
down to Florida. This claim included the best part of North 
America, — what was destined to be the third and most spacious 
home of the Anglo-Saxon race. 



III. ENGLAND SEVERED FROM THE PAPACY BY 
HENRY VIII (1509-1547) 

330. Cardinal Wolsey. Henry VII died in 1509, leaving his 
throne to his son Henry, an energetic and headstrong youth of 
eighteen years. We must here at the opening of the young king's 
reign' introduce his greatest minister, Thomas Wolsey (1475?- 
1530). This man was one of the most remarkable characters of 
his generation. He was, as Holinshed characterizes him, "very 
eloquent, and full of wit; but passingly ambitious." Henry 
elevated him to the office of Archbishop of York and made him 
Lord Chancellor of the realm; the Pope made him a cardinal, 
and afterwards papal legate in England. He was now virtually 
at the head of affairs in both State and Church. 

Wolsey was a patriot, — the best patriot of his time. But he 
conceived the great need of England, still feeling the effects of 
the old feudal turbulency, to be a single, strong, firm hand at the 

1 In 1 5 12, joining what was known as the Holy League, — a union against the 
French king, of which the Pope was the head, — Henry made his first campaign in 
France. While Henry was across the Channel, James IV of Scotland thought to give 
aid to the French king by invading England. The Scottish army was met by the Eng- 
lish force at Flodden, beneath the Cheviot Hills, and completely overwhelmed (1513). 
King James was killed, and the flower of the Scottish nobility were left dead upon the 
field. It was the most terrible disaster that had ever befallen the Scottish nation. 
Scott's poem Mannioit, a Talc of Flodden Field, commemorates the battle. 



§331] HENRY AS "DEFENDER OF THE FAITH" 301 



helm; hence his first aim was to make the royal power supreme 
and absolute. His second aim was to make England the center 
of European politics, the mediator between the rival powers of 
France, Spain, and the Papacy. He attained in a fair measure 
both these ends; he enabled Henry to rule as well as to reign, and 
secured for Eng- 



land great pres- 
tige in Europe. 
331. Henry as 
the " Defender 
of the Faith." It 
was early in the 
reign of Henry 
VIII that Martin 
Luther tacked his 
famous ninety- 
five theses upon 
the door of the 
chapel at Wit- 
tenberg. Like 
all the rest of 
Western Chris- 
tendom, England 
was profoundly 
stirred. When, a 

little later, Luther attacked directly the papal power, Henry wrote 
a Latin treatise refuting the arguments of the audacious monk. 

The Pope, Leo X, rewarded Henry's Catholic zeal by confer- 
ring upon him the title of "Defender of the Faith" (1521). 
This title was retained by Henry after the secession of the Church 
of England from the Papal See, and is borne by his latest successor 
to-day, although he is "defender" of quite a different faith from 
that in the defense of which Henry first earned the title. 

332. Henry seeks to be divorced from Catherine. We have 
now to relate some circumstances which very soon changed Henry 
from a zealous supporter of the Papacy into a bitter enemy. 




Fig. 62. Henry VI II. (After a painting by Holbein) 



302 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§ 333 

Henry's marriage — he married Catherine of Aragon, the widow 
of his brother Arthur— had been prompted by policy and not 
by love. Of the five children born of the union, all had died 
save a sickly daughter named Mary. In these successive afflic- 
tions which left him without a son to succeed him, Henry saw 
or feigned to see a sign of Heaven's displeasure because he had 
taken to wife the widow of his brother. And now a new cir- 
cumstance arose, if it had not existed for some time previous to 
this. Henry fell in love with Anne Boleyn, a beautiful and 
vivacious maid of honor in the queen's household. This new 
affection so greatly quickened the king's conscience that he soon 
became fully convinced that it was his duty to put Catherine 
aside. Accordingly Henry asked the Pope, Clement VII, to grant 
him a divorce. Clement gave no immediate decision, but after 
about two years' delay, influenced by the Emperor Charles, he 
ordered Henry and Catherine both to appear before him at Rome. 

333. The Fall of Wolsey; his Death (i53o). Henry's pa- 
tience was now exhausted. Becoming persuaded that Wolsey 
was not exerting himself as he might to secure the divorce, he 
banished him from court. The hatred of Anne Boleyn and of 
others, for Wolsey had many enemies, pursued the fallen minister. 
Finally, he was arrested on the preposterous charge of high 
treason. While on his way to London the unhappy minister, 
broken in spirit and in health, was prostrated by a fatal fever. As 
he lay dying in the arms of the kind monks of Leicester Abbey, 
he uttered these self-censuring words: "Had I served my God as 
diligently as I have served my king, He would not have given me 
over in my gray hairs." 

Wolsey had indeed sunk his priestly office in that of the states- 
man, and as a statesman he had often stifled the scruples of con- 
science in obedience to the king's unholy wishes and commands. 

334. Thomas Cromwell. After the disgrace of Wolsey an 
attendant of his named Thomas Cromwell rapidly assumed in 
Henry's regard the place from which the cardinal had fallen. 
For the space of ten years this strong but unscrupulous man 
shaped the policy of Henry's government. What he proposed to 



§ 335] THE BREACH WITH ROME 303 

himself was the establishment of a royal despotism upon the ruin 
of every other power in the State. Man of iron will that he was, 
Cromwell pursued his aims with such terrible relentlessness that 
the period during which his power was supreme has been called 
the English Reign of Terror. The executioner's ax was often wet 
with the blood of those who stood in his way or who in any 
manner incurred his or the king's displeasure. 

It was to the bold suggestions of this man that Henry now lis- 
tened. Cromwell's advice to the king was to waste no more time 
in negotiating with the Pope, but at once to renounce the jurisdic- 
tion of the Roman pontiff, proclaim himself supreme head of the 
Church of England, and then get a decree of divorce from his 
own courts. 

335. First Acts in the Breach with Rome (1533-1534). 
The advice of Cromwell was acted upon, and by a series of steps 
England was swiftly carried out from under the authority of the 
Roman See. Henry first virtually cut the Gordian knot by a 
secret marriage with Anne Boleyn, notwithstanding a papal 
decree threatening him with excommunication should he dare 
to do so. 

Parliament, which was entirely subservient to Henry's wishes, 
now passed a law known as the Act in Restraint of Appeals 
(1533), which made it a crime for any Englishman to carry a 
case out of the realm to the court of Rome. This was to prevent 
Catherine from appealing to the Pope from any decision which 
might be rendered in her case by an English tribunal. Thomas 
Cranmer, a Cambridge doctor whom Henry had made Archbishop 
of Canterbury, now formed a court, tried the case, and declared 
the king's marriage with Catherine null and void. 

The following year (1534) Henry procured from Parliament 
the passage of the important Act of Annates, which forbade abso- 
lutely the payment to Rome of the first fruits of archbishoprics 
and bishoprics, and ordered that these should henceforth be paid 
to the English crown. 

336. The Act of Supremacy (1534). At Rome the acts of 
Henry and his Parliament were denounced as acts of impious 



304 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [U37 

usurpation. Straightway the Pope issued a bull excommunicating 
Henry and relieving his subjects from their allegiance to him. 

Henry now took the final and decisive step. He got from Par- 
liament the celebrated Act of Supremacy (1534). This statute 
made Henry "the only Supreme Head in earth of the Church 
of England," vesting in him absolute control of its offices and 
affairs and turning into his hands the revenue which had hitherto 
flowed into Rome's treasury. A denial of the title given the king 
by the statute was made high treason. 

Such a break with the past met of course with much disapproval, 
and many persons were put to death under the statute. The most 
illustrious victims of this tyranny were John Fisher, Bishop of 
Rochester, and Sir Thomas INIore, who for several years was one 
of Henry's chief councilors. Both were sent to the block (in 
1535) because they refused to admit the validity of Henry's 
divorce from Catherine and to acknowledge the royal supremacy 
in religious matters. The execution of Thomas More in particular 
created widespread condemnation and dismay. 

337. The Suppression of the Monasteries (1536-1539). The 
suppression of the monasteries was one of Henry's early acts 
as the supreme head of the Church of England. He resolved 
upon the destruction of the religious houses because, in the first 
place, he coveted their wealth, which at this time included prob- 
ably one fifth of the lands of the realm. Further, the monastic 
orders were openly or secretly opposed to Henry's claims of 
supremacy in religious matters, and this naturally caused him to 
regard them with jealousy and disfavor. This was another reason 
with him for compassing their ruin. 

In order to make the act appear as reasonable as possible, it 
was planned to make the charge of immorality its ground. Ac- 
cordingly commissioners were appointed to inspect the monasteries 
and report upon what they might see and learn. If we may believe 
the report, the smaller houses were conducted in a most shameful 
manner. The larger houses, however, were fairly free from faults. 
Many of them served as schools and inns, and all distributed alms 
to the poor who knocked at their gates. 



^337] SUPPRESSION OF THE MONASTERIES 



305 



But the undoubted usefulness and irreproachable character of 
these larger foundations did not avail to avert ruin from them 
also. During the years 1537 to 1539 all were dissolved, their 
possessors generally surrendering the property voluntarily into 
the hands of the king lest a worse thing than the loss of their 
houses and estates should come upon them. By an act of 
Parliament in 1539 all monastic property was given to the crown.' 




Fig. 63. Ruins of Fountains Abbey, Yorkshire, England 

Altogether there were six hundred and forty-five monasteries 
broken up. The .monastic buildings were generally dismantled, 
every scrap of iron or lead being torn from them, and their unpro- 
tected walls left to sink into picturesque ivy-clad ruins (Fig. 63). 
The dispossessed monks were given small pensions, which relieved 
in a measure the suffering and hardship caused by their expulsion. 

The destruction of the monasteries was a signal for the desecra- 
tion and pillage of the sacred relics, images, and shrines with 
which the land was crowded. The destruction of the famous 
pilgrim shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury (sect. 188) is a 

1 The carrying into execution of the act of suppression, concurring with other 
grievances, stirred up a rebellion in the north of England known as the " Pilgrimage 
of Grace." This uprising was suppressed with unpitying severity. 



3o6 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§338 

typical case. The saint, because he had upheld the supremacy 
of the Pope against King Henry II, was solemnly tried for 
treason and declared a traitor. His bones were then dragged 
from their receptacle and burned, and the rich adornments and 
offerings of the shrine — ^great cartloads of jewels and other 
costly things, probably the real secret of Henry's wrath against 
the saint — were confiscated to the royal use. 

A portion of the Vast wealth which came into Henry's hands 
through all these confiscations was used in founding schools and 
colleges and in establishing new bishoprics, and a part was devoted 
to other public purposes; but by far the greater portion of the 
landed property was sold at merely nominal prices or given out- 
right to the favorites of the king. Many of the leading English 
families of to-day trace the titles of their estates from these con- 
fiscated lands of the religious houses. Thus a new aristocracy was 
raised up whose interests led them to oppose any return to Rome ; 
for in such an event their estates were liable, of course, to be 
restored to the monasteries. 

338. Effects upon Parliament of the Suppression of the 
Monasteries. The effects of the dissolution of the monasteries 
upon the Upper House of Parliament were, for the time being, 
most disastrous to the cause of English constitutional liberty. 
The House of Lords had hitherto often been a check upon the 
royal power. By the destruction of the religious houses that 
branch of Parliament, already greatly reduced in strength by the 
decay of the temporal peerage, was still further weakened through 
the casting out of the abbots and priors who held seats in that 
chamber.^ At the same time the spiritual lords who were left, that 
is, the two archbishops and the bishops, became mere dependents 
of the king, whom the Act of Supremacy had made head of the 
English Church without any superior on earth. 

Thus did the House of Lords almost cease to be a body with a 
mind and will of its own. Since the House of Commons contained 
many servile nominees of the king, the English government now 
became something like an absolute monarchy. 

1 Twenty-six abbots and two priors were expelled. 



§339] ACT OF UNIFORMITY 307 

It was only after a tremendous struggle, as we shall see, that 
the English people were enabled to wrest from their kings the 
power which thus had come into their hands largely through the 
circumstances attending the separation from Rome, and to restore 
to the government its earlier character. 

339. Act to secure Uniformity of Belief (1539). In the 
same year that Parliament gave into Henry's hands the last of 
the property of the monastic orders, it passed a bill drawn in 
conformity with his views and called "an act for abolishing 
diversity of opinions in certain articles concerning Christian 
religion." By this statute the teachings of the old Church re- 
specting the real presence in the Eucharist, the celibacy of the 
priesthood, private Masses, confession to a priest, and other 
tenets were approved as agreeable to the laws of God, and it was 
made a crime for any person to hold, to teach, or to practice 
opinions opposed to any of these dogmas. Death by burning was 
the penalty for a denial of the doctrine of Transubstantiation, and 
even for the second offense in other matters covered by the act. 

What the Church of England should be called under Henry it 
would be hard to say. It was not Protestant; and it was just as 
far from being truly Roman Catholic. That it was distinctively 
neither the one nor the other is shown by the character of the 
persecutions that took place. Catholics and Protestants alike 
were harassed and put to death. Thus on one occasion three 
Catholics who denied that the king was the rightful head of the 
Church and three Protestants who disputed the doctrine of the 
real presence in the Eucharist were dragged on the same sled to 
the place of execution. 

340. Henry's Wives. Henry's troubles with his wives form 
a curious and shameful page in the history of England's kings. 
Anne Boleyn retained the affections of her royal husband only a 
few months. She was charged with unfaithfulness and bekeaded, 
leaving a daughter, who became the famous Queen Elizabeth. 
The day after the execution of Anne the king married Jane 
Seymour, who died the following year. She left a son by the 
name of Edward. 



3o8 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§341 

The fourth marriage of the king was to Anne of Cleves, who 
enjoyed her queenly honors only a few months.^ The king becom- 
ing enamored of a young lady named Catherine Howard, Anne 
was divorced on the charge of a previous betrothal, and a new 
alliance formed. But Catherine was proved guilty of misconduct 
before her marriage, and her head fell upon the block. The sixth 
and last wife of this amatory monarch was Catherine Parr. She 
was a discreet woman, and managed to outlive her husband. 

341. Henry's Death and Character; his Work. Henry died 
in 1547. Very diverse views have been held of his character. 
He was admittedly meddlesome, cruel, arbitrary, and selfish. 
Even if the English people are indebted to him for the freeing of 
the Church of England from dependence on Rome, still they 
owe him for this no gratitude; for what he did here proceeded 
primarily from the most ignoble impulses and motives and not 
from regard for the spiritual welfare of his subjects or from 
sympathy with religious reform. 

In another sphere, however, Henry accomplished a work which 
entitles him to the grateful remembrance of a people who pride 
themselves on their mastery of the sea. He had the vision to dis- 
cern that England's dominion must be sought not on the Euro- 
pean continent but on the ocean. Hence he took a deep interest 
in naval affairs. At a time when the continental sovereigns were 
creating standing armies, he, as it has been put, created for Eng- 
land a "standing navy." He brought to perfection the sailing 
warship and gave it precedence over the oared vessel, which up to 
this time had held the chief place in the world's war navies. Thus 
under Henry the English navy, in the words of an eminent naval 

1 Thomas Cromwell had arranged this marriage; because it had proved so unsatis- 
factory to Henry, he withdrew his favor from Cromwell, and very soon, on the charge of 
his having taken bribes and of other misconduct, sent him to the block (1540). In this, 
as in similar cases, the king acted under the forms of law. He secured from a sub- 
servient J^arliament a bill of attainder, which is an act passed like an ordinary statute. 
Before Cromwell's time the accused had a right to be heard in his own defense. But 
Cromwell, to please his master, had brought it about that Parliament could venture to 
condemn a person without a hearing. It was poetic justice that made Cromwell himself 
a victim of this instrument of tyranny. Because of the misuse by the English Parliament 
of this power, the framers of the Constitution of the United States, in enumerating the 
powers of Congress, inserted this clause : " No bill of attainder . . . shall be passed." 



§342] 



SIR THOMAS MORE'S UTOPIA 



309 



authority, "was becoming an entirely new thing, a thing the 
world had never seen before." The change was somewhat like 
that effected when the steamship replaced the sailing vessel. 

342. Literature under Henry VIII; More's Utopia. The 
most prominent literary figure of this period is Sir Thomas More. 
The work upon which his fame as a writer mainly rests is his 
Utopia, or "Nowhere," a romance like Plato's Republic or Sir 
Philip Sidney's Arcadia. It pictures an imaginary kingdom away 
on an island in the New World, 
then just discovered, where the 
laws, manners, and customs of the 
people were represented as being 
ideally perfect. It was the wretched- 
ness of the lower classes, the 
religious intolerance, the despotic 
government of the times which 
inspired the Utopia. The great 
rnass of the people were living 
in miserable mud hovels. Society 
was simply "a conspiracy of 
the rich against the poor." The 
government of Henry and his 
ministers, in its callous cruelties, 
resembled an oriental tyranny. 

It was this state of things that forced from the sensitive soul 
of More this complaint. "No such cry of pity for the poor," says 
Green, "had been heard since the days of Piers Ploivman." 
But More's was not simply such a cry of despair as was that of 
Langland. He saw a better future; and, with a view of reforming 
them, pointed out the existing ills of society and their remedy. 
He did this by telling how things were in "Nowhere," — how the 
houses and grounds were all inviting, the streets broad and clean ; 
how everybody was taught to read and write, and no one obliged 
to work more than six hours a day ; how drinking houses, brawls, 
wars, and changing parties were unknown ; how the criminal 
classes were treated with the view of effecting their reformation ; 




Fig. 64. Sir Thomas More 
(After the painting by Holbeiit) 



310 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§343 

how in this happy repubUc every person had a part in the 
government and was allowed to follow what religion he chose. 
In this wise way More suggested improvements in social, polit- 
ical, and religious matters. He evidently did not expect that 
Henry would follow all his suggestions, — indeed, More himself, 
before his death, materially changed his views regarding religious 
toleration,- — for he closes his account of the Utopians with this 
admission: "I confess that many things in the commonwealth of 
Utopia I rather ivish than Jiope to see adopted in our own." 

IV. CHANGES IN DOCTRINE AND RITUAL UNDER 
EDWARD VI (1547-1553) 

343. Accession of Edward VI. In accordance with the pro- 
visions of a Succession Act passed in Henry's reign, his only son, 
Edward, succeeded him. The young king was carefully taught 
the doctrines of the reformers, and many changes were made 
in the teachings and service of the English Church, which carried 
it farther away from the Church of Rome. It is these changes in 
the religion that constitute the matters most worthy of our 
attention. 

344. Changes in the Religion. Under the new regime all 
pictures and images and crosses were cleared from the churches ; 
the frescoes were covered with whitewash, and the stained-glass 
windows were broken in pieces; the robe and the surplice were 
cast away ; the use of tapers, holy water, and incense was discon- 
tinued; the veneration of the Virgin and the keeping of saints' 
days were prohibited; belief in purgatory was denounced as a 
vain superstition kept up for purposes of gain, and prayers for 
the dead were interdicted; the real or bodily presence of Christ 
in the bread and wine of the sacrament was denied; the pro- 
hibition against the marriage of the clergy was annulled; and 
the services of the Church, which hitherto — save as to some 
portion of them during the last three years of Henry's reign — 
had been conducted in Latin, were ordered to be said in the 
language of the people. 



§344] PERSECUTION TO SECURE UNIFORMITY 311 

In order that the provision last mentioned might be effectually 
carried out, the English Book of Common Prayer was prepared 
by Archbishop Cranmer, and the first copy issued in 1549. This 
book, which was in the main simply a translation of the old Latin 
Missal and Breviary, with the subsequent change of a word here 
and a passage there to keep it in accord with the growing new 
doctrines, is the same that is used in the Anglican Church at the 
present time. 

In 1552 were published the famous Forty-two Articles of Reli- 
gion, which formed a concise statement of the reformed faith. 
These articles, reduced finally to thirty-nine, form the present 
standard of faith and doctrine in the Church of England. 

345. Persecutions to secure Uniformity. These sweeping 
changes and innovations would have worked little hardship or 
wrong had only everybody, as in ]\Iore's happy republic, been left 
free to favor and follow what religion he would. But unfortunately 
it was only away in "Nowhere" that men were allowed perfect 
freedom of conscience and worship. The idea of toleration had 
not yet dawned upon the world, save in the happier moments of 
some such generous and wide-horizoned soul as his that conceived 
the Utopia. 

By royal edict all preachers and teachers were forced to sign 
the Forty-two Articles; and severe laws, known as Acts for the 
Uniformity of Service, punished with severe penalties any de- 
parture from the forms of the new prayer book. Even the Prin- 
cess Mary, who remained a conscientious adherent of the old 
faith, was harassed and persecuted because she would have the 
Roman Catholic service in her own private chapel. 

Many persons during the reign were imprisoned for refusing to 
conform to the new worship; while two at least were given to the 
flames as "heretics and contemners of the Book of Common 
Prayer." Probably a large majority of the English people were at 
this time still good Roman Catholics at heart. 



312 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§346 

V. REACTION UNDER MARY (1553-1558) 

346, Accession of Mary; Reconciliation with Rome (1554). 
Upon the death of Edward his sister Mary came to the throne. 
Soon after her accession she was married to Phihp II of Spain. 
This marriage had been planned by Philip's father, the Emperor 
Charles V, in the hope that thereby England might become 
actually or in effect a part of the Spanish empire. 

The majority of the English prelates had never in their hearts 
approved the recent ecclesiastical changes. Their zeal for the 
ancient Church, allied with Mary's, now quickly brought about 
the reestablishment of the Roman Catholic worship throughout the 
realm. Parliament voted that the nation should return to its 
obedience to the Papal See; and then the members of both 
Houses fell upon their knees to receive at the hands of the 
papal legate absolution from the sin of heresy and schism. The 
sincerity of their repentance was attested by their repeal of all 
the acts by which the new worship had been set up in the land. 
The joy at Rome was unbounded. The prodigal had returned 
to his father's house. 

But not quite everything done by the reformers was undone. 
Parliament refused to restore the confiscated Church lands, which 
was very natural, as much of this property was now in the hands 
of the lords and commoners. Mary, however, in her zeal for 
the ancient faith, restored a great part of the property still in 
the possession of the crown, and refounded many of the ruined 
monasteries and abbeys. 

347. The Martyrs: Latimer and Ridley (1555), and Cranmer 
(1555). With the reestablishment of the Catholic worship, the 
Protestants in their turn were subjected to persecution. Alto- 
gether, between two and three hundred persons suffered death 
during this reign on account of their religion. The three most 
eminent martyrs were Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer. Latimer 
and Ridley were burned at the same stake. As the torch was 
applied to the fagots, the aged Latimer — he was seventy years 
old — encouraged his companion with these memorable words: 



§348] QUEEN ELIZABETH 313 

"Be of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man; we shall 
this day, by God's grace, light such a candle in England as I 
trust shall never be put out." 

Mary should not be judged harshly for the part she took in the 
persecutions that disfigured her reign. It was not her fault, but 
the fault of the age, that these things were done. Punishment of 
heresy was then regarded, by almost all Catholics and Protestants 
alike, as a duty which could be neglected by those in authority 
only at the peril of Heaven's displeasure. 

VI. FINAL ESTABLISHMENT OF PROTESTANTISM UNDER 
ELIZABETH (1558-1603) 

348. The Queen. Elizabeth, who was twenty-five years of age 
when the death of Mary called her to the throne, was the daughter 
of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. She seems to have inherited 
the characteristics of both parents; hence, perhaps, the inconsist- 
encies of her disposition. She possessed a masculine intellect, a 
strong will, admirable judgment, and great political tact. It was 
these qualities which rendered her reign the strongest and most 
illustrious in the record of England's sovereigns, and raised the 
nation from a position of comparative insignificance to a foremost 
place among the states of Europe. 

Along with her good and queenly qualities and accomplish- 
ments, Elizabeth had many unamiable traits and unwomanly ways. 
She was capricious, treacherous, unscrupulous, and ungrateful. 
Deception and falsehood were her usual weapons in diplomacy. 
" In the profusion and recklessness of her lies," declares the his- 
torian Green, ''Elizabeth stood without a peer in Christendom." 

Yet, notwithstanding all the faults of this remarkable woman, 
she was always popular with her subjects, and this largely for the 
same reason that Philip II was popular in Spain, — because 
she was in perfect sympathy with her people and represented 
their ideals and aspirations. Her subjects' strong liking is em- 
balmed in the familiar title they bestowed upon her, — " Good 
Queen Bess." 



314 



THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 



[§349 



Elizabeth never married, notwithstanding ParUament was con- 
stantly urging her to do so, and suitors, among whom was Philip II 
of Spain, were as numerous as those who sought the hand of 
Penelope. She declared — very late in her reign, however — that 

on her coronation day 
she was married to the 
English realm, and 
that she would have 
no other husband. She 
remained to the very 
last the " fair Vestal 
throned by the West." 
349. Her Ministers. 
One secret of the 
strength and popular- 
ity of Elizabeth's gov- 
ernment was the ad- 
mirable judgment she 
exercised in her choice 
of advisers. The cour- 
tiers with whom she 
crowded her receptions 
might be frivolous per- 
sons; but about her 
council board she gath- 
ered the wisest and 
strongest men of the 
realm. And yet Eliza- 
beth's government was 
really her own. We 
now know that her advisers did not have as much to do with 
shaping the policies of the reign as was formerly believed. 

The most eminent of the queen's ministers was Sir William 
Cecil (Lord Burghley), a man of great sagacity and ceaseless 
industry, and a vigilant and prudent administrator. He stood at 
the head of the queen's council for forty years. 




Fk;. 65. Queen Elizabeth. (The Ermine 

Portrait, from the collection of the Marquis of 

Salisbury, Hatfield House) 



§350] THE ANGLICAN CHURCH REESTABLISHED 315 

350. Reestablishment of the Reformed Church. As Mary 
undid the work in religion of Henry and Edward, so now her 
work was undone by Elizabeth, Elizabeth favored the reformed 
faith rather from policy than from conviction. It was to the 
Protestants alone that she could look for support; her title to the 
crown was denied by every true Catholic in the realm, for she was 
the child of that marriage which the Pope had forbidden under 
pain of the penalties of the Church. But what doubtless con- 
tributed most to fix her in the determination to follow Henry's 
policy as regards the Papacy was her desire to possess supreme 
authority in ecclesiastical as well as in civil matters. 

The religious houses which had been refounded by Mary were 
again dissolved, and Parliament by the two important Acts of 
Supremacy and Uniformity (1559) reestablished the independ- 
ence of the Church of England. The Act of Supremacy required 
all the clergy, and every person holding office under the crown, 
to take an oath declaring the queen to be the supreme governor 
of the realm in all spiritual as well as in all temporal things, and 
renouncing the authority or jurisdiction of any foreign prince or 
prelate. For refusing to deny the supremacy of the Pope many 
Catholics during Elizabeth's reign suffered death, and many more 
endured within the Tower the worse horrors of the rack. 

The Act of Uniformity forbade any clergyman to use any but 
the Anglican liturgy, and required every person to attend the 
Established Church on Sunday and other holy days. The perse- 
cutions which arose under this law caused many Catholics to 
seek freedom of worship in other countries. 

351. The Protestant Nonconformists; Puritans and Sepa- 
ratists. The Catholics were not the only persons among Eliza- 
beth's subjects who were opposed to the Anglican worship. There 
were Protestant nonconformists — ^the Puritans and Separatists — 
who troubled her almost as much as the Catholics. 

The Puritans were so named because they desired a purer form 
of worship than the Anglican. The term was applied to them in 
derision; but the sterling character of those thus designated al 
length turned the epithet of reproach into a badge of honorable 



3i6 



THE ENGLISH REFORMATION 



[§352 




distinction. They did not withdraw from the EstabHshed Church 
but, remaining within its pale, labored to reform it and to shape 
its discipline to their notions. These Puritans were destined to 
play a prominent part in the later affairs of England. Under the 
Stuarts, as we shall see, they became strong enough to overturn 
State and Church and remold both to suit their own ideas. 

The Separatists were still more 
zealous reformers than the Puritans. 
In their hatred of everything that 
bore any resemblance to the Roman 
Catholic worship, they flung away 
the surplice and the prayer book, 
severed all connection with the Estab- 
lished Church, and refused to have 
anything to do with it. Under the 
Act of Uniformity they were perse- 
cuted with great severity, so that mul- 
titudes were led to seek an asylum 
upon the Continent. It was from 
among these exiles gathered in Hol- 
land that a little later came the pas- 
sengers of the Mayflower and Speed- 
well, — the Pilgrim Fathers, who laid 
the foundations of civil liberty in the 
New World. 
352. Mary Stuart, Queen of 
Scots. A large part of the history of Elizabeth's reign is inter- 
twined with the story of her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, 
the "modern Helen," "the most beautiful, the weakest, the most 
attractive, and most attracted of women." She was the daughter 
of James V of Scotland, and to her in right of birth — according 
to all Catholics who denied the validity of Henry's marriage 
with Anne Boleyn — belonged the English crown next after 
Mary Tudor. 

Upon the death, in 1560, of her husband, Francis II of France, 
Mary gave up life at the French court and returned to her native 



Fig. 66. Mary Stuart as 
Queen of France. (After 
a contemporary and authentic 
portrait in the BibUotheque 
Nationale, Paris ; from Cust's 
A"o/es on fJie Authentic Por- 
traits of Mary Queen of Scots) 



§352] MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS 317 

land. She was now in her nineteenth year. The subtle charm of 
her beauty seems to have bewitched all who came into her pres- 
ence, save the more zealous of the reformers, who could never 
forget that their young sovereign was a Catholic. The stern old 
John Knox made her life miserable. He called her a "Moabite" 
and other opprobrious names, till she wept from sheer vexation. 
She dared not punish the impudent preacher, for she knew too 
well the strength of the Protestant feeling among her subjects. 

Other things now conspired with Mary's hated religion to 
alienate entirely the love of her people. Her second husband. 
Lord Darnley, was murdered. The queen was suspected of hav- 
ing some guilty knowledge of the affair. She was imprisoned 
and forced to abdicate in favor of her infant son James. 

Escaping from prison, Mary fled into England (1568). Here 
she threw herself upon the generosity of her cousin Elizabeth 
and entreated aid in recovering her throne. But the part which 
she was generally believed to have had in the murder of her 
husband, her disturbing claims to the English throne, and the 
fact that she was a Catholic all conspired to determine her fate. 
She was placed in confinement, and for nineteen years remained 
a prisoner.. During all this time Mary was the center of in- 
numerable plots on the part of the Catholics, which aimed at 
setting her upon the English throne. The Pope, Pius V, aided 
these conspirators by a bull excommunicating Elizabeth and releas- 
ing her subjects from their allegiance (1570). Finally, a carefully 
laid conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth and place Mary on the 
throne was unearthed. The Spanish king, Philip II, was im- 
plicated. He wrote, "The affair is so much in God's service that 
it certainly deserves to be supported, and we must hope that our 
Lord will prosper it, unless our sins be an impediment thereto." 

Mary was tried for complicity in the plot, was declared guilty, 
and after some hesitation, feigned or otherwise, on the part of 
Elizabeth, was ordered to the block (1587). Even after Eliza- 
beth had signed the warrant for her execution she attempted to 
evade responsibility in the matter by causing a suggestion to be 
made to Mary's jailers that they should kill her secretly. 



3i8 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§353 

353. The ''Invincible Armada"; "Britain's Salamis" (isss). 
The execution of Mary Stuart led immediately to the memorable 
attempt against England by the Spanish Armada. Before her 
death the Queen of Scots had by will disinherited her son and 
bequeathed to Philip II of Spain her claims to the English crown. 
To enforce these rights, to avenge the death of Mary, to punish 
Elizabeth for rendering aid to his rebellious subjects in the Neth- 
erlands, and to deal a fatal blow to the Reformation in Europe 
by crushing the Protestants of England, Philip resolved upon 
making a tremendous effort for the conquest of the heretical 
island. Vast preparations were made for carrying out this project, 
which Philip had long revolved in mind. Great fleets were gath- 
ered in the harbors of Spain, and a large army was assembled in 
the Netherlands to cooperate with the naval armament. 

Pope Sixtus V encouraged Philip in the enterprise, which was 
thus rendered a sort of crusade. At last the fleet, consisting of 
about one hundred and thirty ships, the largest naval armament 
that had ever appeared upon the i\tlantic, and boastfully called 
the "Invincible Armada," set sail from Lisbon for the Channel. 
The approaching danger produced a perfect fever of excitement 
in England. Never did Roman citizens rise more splendidly to 
avert some terrible peril threatening the republic than the Eng- 
lish people now arose as a single man to defend their island 
realm against the revengeful and ambitious project of Spain. 
The imminent danger served to unite all classes, the gentry 
and the yeomanry, Protestants and Catholics. The latter might 
intrigue to set a Mary Stuart on the English throne, but they 
were not ready to betray their land into the hands of the hated 
Spaniards. "In that memorable year," says Hallam, in a pas- 
sage where his usually cold, judicial phrases flame into eloquence, 
"when the dark cloud gathered around our coasts, when Europe 
stood by in fearful suspense to behold what should be the result 
of that great cast in the game of human politics, what the craft 
of Rome, the power of Philip, the genius of Farnese, could 
achieve against the island queen with her Drakes and Cecils — 
in that agony of the Protestant faith and English name, they 



§353] 



THE ''INVINCIBLE ARMADA^ 



319 



stood the trial of their spirit without swerving from their alle- 
giance. It was then that the Catholics in every county repaired 
to the standard of the lord lieutenant, imploring that they might 
not be suspected of bartering the national independence for their 
religion itself." 

On July 19, 1588, the Armada was first descried by the watch- 
men on the English cliffs. • It swept up the Channel in the form 
of a great crescent, seven miles in width from tip to tip of horn. 







Fig. (i"]. Spanish and English War Vessels of the Sixteenth 
Century. (From an engraving) 

The English ships, about eighty in number, whose light structure 
and swift movements, together with the superior gunnery of their 
sailors, gave them a great advantage over the clumsy Spanish gal- 
leons, almost immediately began to impede their advance, and for 
seven days incessantly harassed the Armada. 

One night, as the damaged fleet lay off the harbor of Calais, 
the English sent fire ships among the vessels, whereby a number 
were destroyed and a panic created among the others. A deter- 
mined attack the next day by Howard, Drake, and Lord Henry 
Seymour inflicted a still severer loss upon the fleet. 



320 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§354 

The Spaniards, thinking now of nothing save escape, spread 
their sails in flight, proposing to get away by sailing northward 
around the British Isles. But the storms of the northern seas 
dashed many of the remaining ships to pieces on the Scottish 
and the Irish shores. Barely one third of the ships of the 
Armada ever reentered the harbors whence they sailed. When 
intelligence of the woeful disaster was carried to the imperturb- 
able Philip, he simply said, "God's will be done; I sent my 
fleet to fight against the English, not against the elements." 

Well may the great fight in the Channel which shattered the 
Armada be called "Britain's Salamis"; for like Athens' Salamis 
it- revealed the weakness and proclaimed the downfall of a vast 
despotic empire, while at the same time it disclosed the strength 
and announced the rise of a new free state destined to a great 
future. 

But the destruction of the Spanish Armada concerned other 
than purely English and Spanish interests. It marked the turn- 
ing point in the great duel between Catholicism and Protes- 
tantism. It set definite limits to the Catholic reaction. It not 
only decided that England was to remain Protestant but it fore- 
shadowed the independence of the Protestant Netherlands and 
assured, or at least greatly helped to assure, the future of Prot- 
estantism in Scandinavia and in North Germany. 

354. Maritime and Colonial Enterprises. The crippling of the 
naval power of Spain left England mistress of the seas. The little 
island realm now entered upon the most splendid period of her 
history. These truly were "the spacious times of great Elizabeth." 
The English people, stirred by recent events, seemed to burn with 
a feverish impatience for maritime adventure and glory. Many 
a story of the daring exploits of English sea rovers during the 
reign of Elizabeth seems like a repetition of some tale of the 
old Vikings. 

Among all these sea rovers, half explorer, half adventurer. Sir 
Francis Drake (about 1 540-1 596) was preeminent. Before the 
Armada days he had sailed round the globe (1577-1580), bring- 
ing home with him an immense booty which he had got as ransom 



§355] DEATH OF QUEEN ELIZABETH 321 

from the Spanish cities of Peru and Chile in South America, and 
for the achievement had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. 

One of the favorite enterprises of the English navigators of 
this period was the search for a Northwest Passage — that is, a 
passage around the north end of the new continent of America — 
to the East Indies.^ While hunting for this amidst the ice floes of 
the Arctic seas, Frobisher and Davis discovered the straits which 
bear their respective names. 

Especially deserving of mention among the enterprises of these 
times are the undertakings and adventures of Sir Walter Raleigh 
(i552?-i6i8). Several expeditions were sent out by him for 
making explorations in the New World. One of these, which ex- 
plored the central coasts of North America, returned with such 
glowing accounts of the beauty and richness of the land visited 
that, in honor of the virgin queen, it was named Virginia. 

Raleigh attempted to establish colonies in the new land (1585- 
1590), but the settlements were unsuccessful. The settlers, how- 
ever, when they returned home, carried back with them the 
tobacco plant, and introduced into England the habit of smok- 
ing it.^ It was at this time also that the potato, a native product 
of the New World, was brought to Ireland. These, together with 
maize, or Indian corn, were the chief return the New World 
made to the Old for the great number of domesticated plants 
and grains which it received thence. 

355. The Queen's Death. The closing days of Elizabeth's 
reign were to her personally dark and gloomy. She seemed to 
be burdened with a secret griefs as well as by the growing 

1 The object of the expedition of CoUimbus was a Western Passage to China. 
It resulted in the discover}' of the vast continent of America, which bars the way. 
This barrier, however, might probably be turned, either at the south end or at the 
north, or at both ; and the search for a Western Passage was thus transformed into a 
search for a Southwest Passage and a Northwest Passage. The former was discovered 
by Magellan, a Portuguese in the Spanish service, in 1520. The Northwest Passage 
remained neglected for half a century longer, and was first sought by the English. — 
Payne, Voyages of English Seamen, p. S3 

2 Some years before this the plant had been carried to Spain and to France, but 
seems to have been valued mainly for its medicinal qualities. 

3 In 160 1 she sent to the block her chief favorite, the Earl of Essex, who had been 
found guilty of treason. 



322 THE ENGLISH REFORMATION [§356 

infirmities of age. She died in 1603, in the seventieth year of her 
age and the forty-fifth of her reign. With her ended the Tudor 
line of English sovereigns. 

Literature of the Elizabethan Era 

356. Influences Favorable to Literature. The years covered 
by the reign of Elizabeth constitute one of the most momentous 
periods in history. It was the age when Europe was most deeply 



,^^,^''4' 






fit M ssss 



/ 



\? 




Fk;. 68. Melrose Ar.iiEV. (From a photograph) 

As the ruins of Fountains Abbey (see Fig. 63) are a memorial of the iconoclasm of the 
Reformation movement in England, so are the remains of Melrose Abbey a like monu- 
ment of the iconoclastic phase of the Reformation in Scotland. With the change in 
doctrines there, the monks of the historic abbey — it was founded in the thirteenth 
centuiy — were driven out and the beautiful sculptures of the abbey church defaced 

Stirred by the Reformation. It was, too, a period of marvelous 
physical and intellectual expansion and growth. The discoveries 
of Columbus and others had created a New World. The Renais- 
sance had re-created the Old World, — had revealed an unsuspected 
treasure in the civilizations of the past. Thus everything con- 
spired to quicken men's intellect and stimulate their imagination. 
An age of such activity and achievement almost of necessity 
gives birth to a strong and vigorous literature. And thus is 
explained, in part at least, how during this period the English 
people — for no people of Europe felt more deeply the stir and 



§ 356] REFERENCES 323 

movement of the times nor helped more to create this same stir 
and movement than the English nation — should have developed 
a literature of such originality and richness and strength as to 
make it the prized inheritance of all the world. "The greai 
writers who shine in the literary splendor of the Elizabethar 
Age," says an eminent critic, "were the natural product of th< 
newly awakened, thoughtful English nation of that day." 

To make special mention of all the great writers who adorne( 
the Elizabethan era would carry us quite beyond the limits o 
our book. Having said something of the influences under whicl 
they wrote, we will simply add that this age was the age ot 
Shakespeare and Spenser and Bacon.^ 

Selections from the Sources. More's Utopia is the choicest literary prod- 
uct of the early revival of learning in England. The student should not fail 
to read it carefully. It lights up at once the social, the political, and the 
religious world of the time (cf. sect. 342). For a variety of illustrative material, 
turn t*o Henderson, E. F., Side Lights oti English History, pp. 1-32 ; and 
Kendall^ E. K., Source-Book, chaps, viii-x. In Payne, E. J., Voyages of the 
Elizabethan Seamen (First Series, Oxford, 1893), read " The Famous Voyage 
of Sir Francis Drake," pp. 196-229. Robinson, J. H., Readings in E^iropean 
A'/'.f/iJrj/, vol. ii, pp. 135-152, 186-193. 

Secondary Works. Seebohm, F., The Oxford Reformers (a volume of rare 
freshness and charm on the fellow-work and influence of the Oxford re- 
formers, — Colet, Erasmus, and More). The Cambridge Modem History, vol. i, 
chap. xiv. .Green, J. R., Sho7-t History of the English People, chaps, vi and vii. 
Froude, J. A., English Seamen in the Sixteenth Centmy and The Spanish Story 
of the Armada. Gasquet, F. A., Henry I'lII and the English Monasteries, 
2 vols., and The Eve of the Reformatio7i (these are the works of an eminent 
Catholic scholar). Creighton, M., 'Queen Elizabeth and Cardiftal Wolsey. 
Beesly, E. S., Queen Elizabeth. For concise narrations of the events dealt 
with in this chapter, see Gardiner's, Montgomery's, Terry's, Coman and 
Kendall's, Andrews', and Cheyney's textbooks on English history. And 
for biographical information, turn to the excellent articles in the English 
Dictionaiy of jVational Biography. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Sir Thomas More and his romance Utopia: 
Seebohm, F., The Oxford Reformers, pp. 346-365. 2. The fall of Wolsey : 
Creighton, M., Cardinal Wolsey, chap. x. 3. Thomas Cromwell and the "English 
Terror": Green, J. H., History of the English People, vol. ii, pp. 164-191. 

1 William Shakespeare (1564-1616) ; Edmund Spenser (i552?-i509) ; Francis Bacon 
(1561-1626). Shakespeare and Bacon, it will be noticed, outlived Elizabeth. 



CHAPTER XXIII 

THE REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS; RISE OF THE 
DUTCH REPUBLIC 

(1572-1609) 

357. The Country. The name Netherlands (lowlands) was 
formerly applied to all that district in the northwest of Europe, 
much of it sunk below the level of the sea, now occupied by the 
kingdoms of the Netherlands and Belgium. A large part of this 




Fig. 69. Typical Dutch Scene: Zaandam. (From a photograph) 

region is simply the delta accumulations of the Rhine and other 
rivers emptying into the North Sea. Originally it was often over- 
flowed by its streams and inundated by the ocean. 

But this unpromising morass, protected at last by heavy dikes 
seaward against the invasions of the ocean and by great embank- 
ments inland against the overflow of its streams, was destined to 
become the site of the most potent cities of Europe and the seat 
of one of the foremost commonwealths of modern times. No 
country in Europe made greater progress in civilization during 
the mediaeval era than the Netherlands. At the opening of the 
sixteenth century they contained a crowded and busy popula- 
tion of three million souls. The ancient marshes had been trans- 
formed into carefully kept gardens and orchards. The walled 
cities numbered between two and three hundred. Antwerp rivaled 

324 



§358] THE NETHERLANDS UNDER CHARLES V 325 

even the greatest of the Itahan cities. "I was sad when I saw 
Antwerp," writes a Venetian ambassador, "for I saw Venice 
surpassed." 

358. The Low Countries under Charles V (1515-1555). The 
Netherlands were part of those possessions over which the 
Emperor Charles V ruled by hereditary right. Towards the close 
of his reign he set up here the Inquisition with the object of sup- 
pressing the heresy of the reformers. Many persons perished at 
the stake and upon the scaffold, or were strangled, or buried 
alive.^ But when Charles retired to the monastery at Yuste the 
reformed doctrines w§r^, notwithstanding all his efforts, far more 
widely spread and deeply rooted in the Netherlands than when 
he entered upon their extirpation by fire and sword. 

359. Accession of Philip II. In 1555, in the presence of an 
august and princely assembly at Brussels, Charles V abdicated the 
crown whose weight he could no longer bear, and placed it upon 
the head of his son Philip. What sort of man this son was we 
have already learned (sect. 320). 

Philip remained in the Netherlands four years, employing much 
of his time in devising means to root out the heresy of Protes- 
tantism. In 1559 he set sail for Spain, never to return. His ar- 
rival in the peninsula was celebrated by an auto-da-je at Valladolid, 
festivities which ended in the burning of thirteen persons whom 
the Inquisition had condemned as heretics. It was not delight at 
the sight of suffering that led Philip on his home-coming to be a 
spectator at these awful solemnities. He doubtless wished through 
his presence to give sanction to the work of the Holy Office and 
to impress all with the fact that unity of religion in Spain, as the 
necessary basis of peace and unity in the state, would be main- 
tained by him at any and every cost. 

360. "Long live the Beggars!" Upon his departure from the 
Netherlands, Philip intrusted the government to his half sister 

■^ Charles' persecutions covered the years from 1521 to 1555. The number of 
martyrs during these years has been greatly exaggerated ; it was put as high as one 
hundred thousand by the celebrated Dutch jurist, Grotius (d. 1645). Blok believes the 
number actually suffering the death penalty was less than one thousand. See his 
History of the People of the Netherlands, vol. ii, p. 3 1 7. 



32 6 REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS [§361 

Margaret, Duchess of Parma, as regent. Under the administration 
of Margaret (1559-1567) the persecution of the Protestants went 
on with renewed bitterness. At last the nobles leagued together 
and resolved to petition the regent for a redress of grievances. 
When the duchess learned that the petitioners were about to wait 
upon her, she displayed great agitation. Thereupon one of her 
councilors exclaimed, "What, madam! afraid of -these beggars?" 

The expression was carried, to the nobles, who were assembled at 
a banquet. Straightway one of their number suspended a beggar's 
wallet from his neck and, filling a w'ooden.bowl/with wine, pro- 
posed the toast, "Long live the Ijeggars ! '"^ 3^he name was tumul- 
tuously adopted andbecamp the party designation of the patriot 
Netherlanders during their long struggle with the' Spanish power. 

36L The Iconoclasts (i566). The only reply of the govern- 
ment to the petition of the nobles for a mitigation of the severity 
of the edicts concerning heresy was a decree termed the Mod- 
eration, which substituted hanging for burning in the case of 
condemned heretics. 

The pent-up irttiignation of the people at length burst forth in 
uncontrollable fury. They gathered in great mobs and proceeded 
to demolish every image they could find in the churches through- 
out the country. The monasteries, too, were sacked, their libraries 
burned, and the inmates driven from their cloisters. The tempest 
destroyed innumerable art treasures, which have been as sincerely 
mourned by the lovers of the beautiful as the burned rolls of the 
Alexandrian library have been lamented by the lovers of learning. 

362. The Duke of Alva and the "Council of Blood" (i567). 
The year following this outbreak Philip sent to the Netherlands a 
veteran Spanish army, headed by the Duke of Alva, a man after 
Philip's own heart, deceitful, fanatical, and merciless. 

Alva was one of the ablest generals of the age, and the intelli- 
gence of his coming threw the provinces into a state of the greatest 
agitation and alarm. Those who could do so hastened to get out 
of the country. William the Silent, Prince of Orange,^ one of the 

1 He bore also the title of Count of Nassau. Nassau was a little German state, now 
included in Prussia. Orange was a petty principality on the Rhone, near Avignon. 
It came into the hands of the family of Nassau in 1530. 



§363] 



WILLIAM OF ORANGE 



327 



leading noblemen of the Lowlands, fled to Germany, where he 
began to gather an army of volunteers for the struggle which he 
now saw to be inevitable, 

Egmont and Hoorn, Catholic noblemen^ of high rank and great 
distinction, were treacherously seized, cast into prison, and soon 
afterwards beheadodr. TtiJ&' duchess was relieved of the govern- 
ment, which was-committed to the tirmer hands of Alva, who, to 
aid him in the managenjTent of affarfcs, organized a most iniquitous 
tribunal, known in fiistory as 
the "Council of Blood." 

The Inquisiti<3n was now 
reestablished, and a perfect 
reign of terror began. The 
number of Alva's victims 
during his short rul'e, — he is 
said to have boasted that he 
•had put to death over eight- 
een thousand — might al- 
most persuade us that he had 
deliberately purposed the ex- 
termination of the people of 
the Netherlands. 

363. William of Orange. 
The eyes of all patriot Neth- 
erlanders were now turned to the Prince of Orange as their only 
deliverer. The prince, though never a zealous Church partisan, was 
a deeply religious man and believed himself called of Heaven to the 
work of rescuing his country from Spanish tyranny. Up to this 
time he had been a Catholic, having been brought up as a page in 
the household of the Emperor Charles V. He now embraced Protes- 
tantism; but both as a Catholic and as a Protestant he opposed 
persecution on account of religious belief. His attitude here is 
worthy of special notice, for it set him apart from the great 

1 Many Catholics sympathized at first with the Protestants and acted with them, 
because they felt that Philip's acts were in direct violation of the chartered rights and 
privileges of the cities and provinces of the Netherlands. But Egmont and Hoorn had 
been guilty of no overt acts, and their fate was undeserved. 




Fig. 70. 
Silent) 



William of Orange (The 
(After a painting by Micre- 
velt, Amsterdam) 



328 REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS [§364 

majority of his contemporaries, and had a vast influence in shaping 
the policies and the destinies of the small yet great common- 
wealth of which he was to be the founder. 

William of Orange was a statesman rather than a soldier; yet 
even as a leader in war he evinced talent of a high order. The 
Spanish armies were commanded successively by the most dis- 
tinguished generals of Europe; but the prince coped ably with 
them all, and in the masterly service which he rendered his coun- 
try earned the title of "The Founder of Dutch Liberties." 

364. The Capture of Briel (i572): the Beginning of the 
Sea Power of the Dutch. It was the nature q^ their country, 
half land, half water, which enabled th^ Dutch to make such a 
prolonged and finally successful resistance to the power of Spain. 
The Dutch triumphed because the sea helped them. The influence 
that this element was to exert upon the struggle was foreshadowed 
early in the conflict by a celebrated exploit of Dutch seamen. 

The circumstances of this exploit were these. Almost at the 
outset of the war the Prince of Orange had commissioned some 
sailors as privateers to prey upon Spanish ships and to harass the 
coast towns which favored the enemy. Soon the sea was swarm- 
ing with these privateers, — Water Beggars, they were called, 
— who, out of reach of restraint, became veritable freebooters, 
and revived the days and emulated the deeds of the Saxon cor- 
sairs who a thousand years before had put out from these same 
or neighboring creeks and lagoons. 

One day a squadron of twenty or more ships of these bucca- 
neers, expelled from English harbors, made a descent upon the 
port of Briel (or Brill) in Holland, seized the place, and held it 
for the Princ^ of Orange. It was a small affair in itself, some- 
what like the affair at Lexington in the American Revolution, but 
it stirred wonderfully the people of the Lowlands. Straightway 
other places opened their gates to the Water Beggars, and thus 
the rebellion speedily gained a secure basis for regular naval 
operations. It was the real beginning of the great sea power of 
the future Dutch Republic, which for two hundred years was to 
be a potent force in history. 



§ 365] PACIFICATION OF GHENT 329 

Having now gained some idea of the causes of the revolt and 
the nature of the struggle, we must hurry on to the issue of the 
matter. In so doing we shall pass unnoticed many sieges and 
battles, negotiations and treaties/ 

365. "The Spanish Fury"; the Pacification of Ghent (i576). 
The year 1576 was marked by a revolt of the Spanish soldiers on 
account of their not receiving their pay, the costly war having 
drained Philip's treasury. The mutinous army marched through 
the land, pillaging city after city and paying themselves with the 
spoils. The beautiful city of Antwerp was ruined. The atrocities 
committed by the frenzied soldiers caused the outbreak to be 
called "The Spanish Fury." The terrible state of affairs led to 
an alliance between Holland and Zealand and the other fifteen 
provinces of the Netherlands, known in history as the Pacification 
of Ghent (1576). The resistance to the Spanish crown had thus far 
been carried on without concerted action among the several states. 

366. The Treaty of Utrecht (1579). With the Spanish forces 
under the lead of commanders of distinguished ability, the war 
now went on with increased vigor, — fortune, with many vacil- 
lations, inclining to the side of the Spaniards. Disaffection arose 
among the Netherlanders, the outcome of which was the separation 
of the northern and southern provinces. The seven Protestant 
states of the North, the chief of which were Holland and Zealand, 
by the Treaty of Utrecht, drew together in a permanent confeder- 
ation, known as the Seven United Provinces of the Netherlands, 
with the Prince of Orange as stadtholder. In this league was laid 
the foundation of the renowned Dutch Republic. 

The ten Catholic provinces of the South, although they con- 
tinued their contest with Philip a little longer, ultimately sub- 
mitted to Spanish tyranny. Portions of these provinces were 
eventually absorbed by France, while the remainder after varied 
fortunes finally became the present kingdom of Belgium. With 
their history we shall have no further concern at present, but 
turn now to follow the fortunes of the rising republic of the North. 

1 Read in Motley's Rise of the Dittch Republic the siege and sack of Haarlem and 
the relief of Leyden. 



330 REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS [§ 367 

367. The "Ban" and the "Apology" (i580-i58i). William 
of Orange was, of course, the animating spirit of the confederacy 
formed by the Treaty of Utrecht. In the eyes of Philip and his 
viceroys he appeared the sole obstacle in the way of the pacilica- 
tion of the provinces and their return to civil and ecclesiastical 
obedience. In vain had Philip sent against him the ablest and 
most distinguished commanders of the age; in vain had he 
endeavored to detach him from the cause of his country by mag- 
nificent bribes of title's, offices, and fortune. 

Philip now resolved to employ public assassination^ for the 
removal of the invincible general and the incorruptible patriot. ■ 
He published a ban against the prince, declaring him an outlaw 
and "the chief disturber of all Christendom and especially of 
these Netherlands," and offering any one who would deliver him 
into his hands "dead or alive" pardon for any crime he might 
have committed, a title of nobility, and twenty-five thousand 
crowns in gold or in lands. 

The prince responded to the infamous edict by a remarkable 
paper entitled "The Apology of the Prince of Orange," the most 
terrible arraignment of tyranny that was ever penned. The 
"Apology" was scattered throughout Europe, and everywhere 
produced a profound impression. 

368. The Declaration of Independence (July 25, 1581). 
The United Provinces had not yet formally renounced their 
allegiance to the Spanish crown. They now deposed Philip as 
their sovereign, broke in pieces his seal, and put forth to the 
world their memorable Declaration of Independence, a document 
as sacred to the Dutch as the Declaration of 1776 is to Americans. 

The preamble contains these words: "Whereas God did not 
create the people slaves to their prince, to obey his commands, 

1 We use the expression " public assassination " in order to indicate a change in 
Philip's methods. lie had all along tried to get rid of the prince by private or secret 
assassination. Now his edict of outlawrj' makes the proposed assassination avowedly a 
public or governmental affair. To comprehend this proceeding we must bear in mind 
that in the sixteenth century assassination was not looked upon with that utter abhorrence 
with which we rightly regard it. In the petty states of Italy it was a weapon resorted to 
almost universally, and seemingly without any compunction of conscience, and even in 
the North many of the rulers at one time and another had recourse to it. 



§369] PRINCE OF ORANGE ASSASSINATED 331 

whether right or wrong, but rather the prince for the sake of the 
subjects, to govern them according to equity, to love and support 
them as a father his children or a shepherd his flock, and even at 
the hazard of life to defend and preserve them; [therefore] when 
he does not behave thus, but, on the contrary, oppresses them, 
seeking opportunities to infringe their ancient customs and privi- 
leges, exacting from them slavish compliance, then he is no 
longer a prince, but a tyrant, and the subjects . , . may not 
only disallow his authority, but legally proceed to the choice of 
another prince for their defense." 

This language was a wholly new dialect to the ears of Philip 
and of princes like him. They had never heard anything like it 
before uttered in such tones by a whole people. But it was a 
language destined to spread wonderfully and to become very 
common. We shall hear it often enough a little later in the era 
of the Political Revolution. It will become familiar speech in 
England, in America, in France, — almost everywhere.'^ 

369. Assassination of the Prince of Orange. "The ban soon 
bore fruit." Upon the loth day of July, 1584, after five previous 
unsuccessful attempts had been made upon his life, the Prince of 
Orange was fatally shot by an assassin named Balthasar Gerard. 
Philip approved the murder as "an exploit of supreme value to 
Christendom." The murderer was put to death with hideous tor- 
ture, but his heirs received the promised reward, being endowed 
with certain of the estates of the prince and honored by eleva- 
tion to the rank of the Spanish nobility, 

370. The Truce of 1609 ; Condition of the United Provinces. 
Severe as was the blow sustained by the Dutch patriots in the 
death of the Prince of Orange, they did not lose heart but con- 
tinued the struggle with admirable courage and steadfastness. 
Prince Maurice, a mere youth of seventeen years, the second son 
of William, was chosen stadtholder in his place. He proved 
himself a worthy son of the great chief and patriot. 

1 It has been asserted that the Declaration had an influence in shaping the English 
Declaration of Rights in 16S9 and the American Declaration of Independence in 1776; 
but there is no evidence that in either of these cases the Dutch Declaration was either 
known or consulted or that it had the slightest influence. 



332 



REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS 



[§370 



The war now went on with unabated fury. France as well as 
England became involved, both fighting against Philip, who was 
now laying claims to the crowns of both countries. To tell of the 
battles on land lost and won, of the naval combats on almost 
every sea beneath the skies, would be a story without end. The 
destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588 marked the turning 




point of the struggle, yet not the end of it. Philip II died in 1598, 
but the losing fight was carried on by his successor, Philip III. 

Europe finally grew weary of the seemingly interminable strug- 
gle, and the Spanish commanders becoming convinced that it 
was impossible to reduce the Dutch rebels to obedience by force 
of arms, negotiations were entered into which issued in the cele- 
brated Truce of 1609. This truce was in reality an acknowledg- 
ment by Spain of the independence of the United Provinces of 



§ 370] CONDITION OF THE UNITED PROVINCES 333 

the Netherlands, although the Spanish king was so unwilling to 
admit the fact of his inability to reduce the rebel states to sub- 
mission that the treaty was termed simply '^a truce for twelve 
years." ^ Spain did not formally acknowledge their independence 
until forty years afterwards, in the Peace of Westphalia, at the 
end of the Thirty Years' War (1648). 

Thus ended, after a continuance of over forty years, one of the 
most memorable contests of which history tells. The memories 
of these great days, handed down to later generations of Nether- 
landers, formed a rich and ennobling heritage which, we may 
believe, entered as an element of strength into the Dutch char- 
acter; for ''such traditions," as the historian Hausser truly says, 
"keep a nation upright for centuries." 

One of the most remarkable circumstances of the war was the 
vast expansion of the industries and the commerce of the United 
Provinces, and their astonishing growth in population, wealth, 
and resources, while carrying on the bitter and protracted strug- 
gle. Even in a larger sense than was true before this period, the 
Dutch cities had become the workshops and warehouses of the 
world. Products for distribution and manufacture from every 
land beneath the sun were heaped upon their wharves. Their 
commerce had so expanded that more than one hundred thousand 
of their citizens found a home upon the sea. Nearly one thousand 
ships were engaged in the sole industry of the herring fishery, 
which, it is said, yielded more gold to the little republic than 
all the mines of the New World poured into the coffers of the 
king of Spain. 

It was during this period that the Dutch began the work of 
replacing the Portuguese in their settlements and trading posts in 
the East Indies, and of laying in the rich tropic islands of those 
seas the basis of a splendid colonial empire. 

The intellectual progress of the people kept pace with their 
material advance. Colleges and universities were established in 

1 During this truce period (1609-1621) the Dutch Republic was filled with discord 
through the bitter quarrels of religious and political parties within the little state. The 
most eminent of the Dutch statesmen of the period was John of Barneveld (1549 ?— 1619), 
See his Life by Motley. 



334 REVOLT OF THE NETHERLANDS [§371 

all the leading cities, while common schools were set up every- 
where in town and country. It was rare to meet a person who 
could not both read and write. In the natural and mechanical 
sciences the United Provinces, during the latter part of the six- 
teenth and the first part of the seventeenth century, gave birth 
to some of the most distinguished scholars of Europe. 

371. Influence of the Establishment of the Dutch Republic 
upon both the Religious and the Political Revolution. The 
successful issue of the revolt in the Netherlands meant much for 
the cause of the reformers. The Protestant Lowlands formed a 
sort of strategic point in the great fight between Catholicism and 
Protestantism. The loss of this ground might have proved fatal 
to the Protestant cause. Its maintenance by the forces of the 
reformers set limits to the Catholic reaction. 

The establishment of the Dutch Republic had also great signifi- 
cance for the Political Revolution. In the seventeenth century it 
was Holland that was the foremost champion of the cause of 
political freedom against Bourbon despotism. It was a worthy 
descendant of the first Prince William of Orange who, at one of 
the most critical moments of English history, when Englishmen 
were struggling doubtfully against Stuart tyranny, came to their 
help and rescued English liberties from the peril in which they 
lay (sect. 447). 

Selections from the Sources. Old South Leaflets, No. 72, "The Dutch 
Declaration of Independence " ; No. 69, " The Description of the New Nether- 
lands." Robinson, J. H., Readings in European H/siojy, vol. ii, pp. 171-179. 

Secondary Works. Motley, J. L., T/ie Rise of the Duteh Republic, 3 vols., 
and I/iilo/y of the United Netherlands, 4 vols. These histories by Motley are 
classical, but they lack in judicial spirit. They should be read in connection 
with Blok, J. P., History of the People of the iVetherhDids, 3 vols. YouNG, A., 
History of the Netherlands. Harrison, F., William the Silent. Putnam, R., 
William the Silent, 2 vols. For New Netherlands, consult FisKE, J., The Dutch 
and Quaker Colonies in America, 2 vols. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Sand dunes, dikes, and "polders" of the 
Low Countries: see Encyc. Brit., nth ed., under "Holland." 2. The image- 
breakers: Motley, J. L., The Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. i, pp. 551-576. 
3. How the seventeen provinces were divided into two groups and the basis 
laid of present-day Holland and Belgium : Harrison, F., William the Silent, 
chap, xi, pp. 195-202. 



CHAPTER XXIV 

THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE 
(1562-1629) 

372. The Reformation in France. Before Luther posted his 
ninety-five theses at Wittenberg there had appeared in the Uni- 
versity of Paris and elsewhere in France men who from the study 
of the Scriptures had come to entertain opinions very like those 
of the German reformer. The movement thus begun received a 
fresh impulse from the uprising in Germany under Luther. The 
new doctrines found adherents especially among the lesser nobility 
and the burgher class, and struck deep root in the south, — the 
region of the old Albigensian heresy. 

373. King Francis II, Catherine de' Medici, and the Guises. 
An understanding of the religious wars in France requires that we 
first acquaint ourselves with the chief earlier actors in the 
drama. The drama opens with Francis II (i 559-1 560), a Valois 
king,^ on the French throne. His wife was the young and 
fascinating Mary Stuart of Scotland. Francis was a weak-minded 
boy of sixteen years. The power behind the throne was the 
chiefs of the family of the Guises, who were zealous Catholics, 
and the king's mother, Catherine de' Medici. 

Catherine was an Italian. She seems to have been almost or 
quite destitute of religious convictions of any kind. She was 
determined to rule, and this she did by holding the balance of 
power between the two religious parties. When it suited her pur- 
pose, she favored the Protestants; and when it suited her purpose 
better, she favored the Catholics. Through her counsels and poh- 
cies she contributed largely to make France wretched through the 
reigns of her three sons and to bring her house to a miserable end. 

1 The Valois kings of the sixteenth century were Louis XII (1498-15 15), Francis I 
(1515-1547), Henry II (1547-1559), Francis II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574), 
and Henry III (1574-1589). Henry IV, the successor of Henry III, was the first of 
the Bourbons. 

335 



336 THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE [§ 374 

374. The Huguenot Leaders: the Bourbon Princes and 
Admiral Coligny. Opposed to the Guises were the Bourbon 
princes, Antony, king of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Conde. 
Next after the brothers of Francis II, they were heirs to the 
French throne. 

Gaspard de Coligny, Admiral of France, was " the military hero 
of the French Reformation." Early in life he had embraced the 
doctrines of the reformers, and remained to the last the trusted 
and consistent, though ill-starred, champion of the Protestants. 
His is the most heroic figure that emerges from the unutterable 
confusion of the times. 

The foregoing notice of parties and their chiefs will suffice to 
render intelligible the events which we have now to narrate. 

375. The Massacre of Vassy (i562). After the short reign of 
Francis II his brother Charles came to the throne as Charles IX. 
He was only ten years of age, so the queen mother assumed the 
government in his name. Pursuing her favorite maxim to rule by 
setting one party as a counterpoise to the other, she gave the 
Bourbon princes a place in the government, and also by royal 
edict gave the Huguenots a limited toleration and forbade their 
further persecution. 

These concessions to the Huguenots angered the Catholic chiefs, 
and it was the violation by the adherents of the Duke of Guise of 
the edict of toleration that finally caused the growing animosities 
of the two parties to break out in civil war. While passing through 
the country with a body of armed attendants, at a small place 
called Vassy the duke came upon a company of Huguenots assem- 
bled in a barn for worship. His retainers first insulted and then 
attacked them, killing about forty of the company and wounding 
many more. 

Under the lead of Admiral Coligny and the Prince of Conde, 
the Huguenots now rose throughout France. Philip II of Spain 
sent an army to aid the Catholics, while Elizabeth of England 
extended help to the Huguenots. For a half century and more 
France was distressed, almost without respite, by bitter inter- 
necine strife. 



§ 376] MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHOLOMEW 337 

376. The Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day (August 24, 
1572). Eight years after the massacre of Vassy, Catherine de' 
Medici, as a means of cementing a treaty which had been ar- 
ranged between the two parties/ proposed that the Princess 
Margaret, the sister of Charles IX, should be given in marriage 
to Henry of Bourbon, the new young king of Navarre. The 
announcement of the proposed alliance caused great rejoicing 
among Catholics and Protestants alike, and the chiefs of both 
parties crowded to Paris to attend the wedding. 

Before the festivities' which followed the nuptial ceremonies 
were over, the world was shocked by one of the most awful 
crimes recorded in history, — the massacre of the Huguenots in 
Paris on St. Bartholomew's Day. The circumstances which led 
to this fearful tragedy were these. Among the Protestant nobles 
who came up to Paris to attend the wedding was Admiral Coligny. 
Jealous of his influence over her son, Catherine resolved upon 
the death of the admiral. The attempt miscarried, Coligny 
receiving only a slight wound from the assassin's bullet. The 
Huguenots rallied about their wounded chief with loud threats 
of revenge. Catherine, driven on by insane fear, now deter- 
mined upon the death of all the Huguenots in Paris as the only 
measure of safety. By the 23d of August the plans for the mas- 
sacre were all arranged. On the evening of that day Catherine 
went to her son and represented to him that the Huguenots had 
formed a plot for the assassination of the royal family and the 
leaders of the Catholic party, and that the utter ruin of their 
house and cause could be averted only by the immediate destruc- 
tion of the Protestants within the city walls. The order for the 
massacre was then laid before him for his signature. The young 
king shrank in terror from the deed, and at first refused to sign 
the decree; but overcome at last by the representations of his 
mother, he exclaimed, "I consent, provided not one Huguenot 
be left alive in France to reproach me with the deed." 

A little past the hour of midnight on St. Bartholomew's Day 
(August 24, 1572), at a preconcerted signal, — the tolling of a 

1 The Treaty of St. Germain, 1570. 



338 THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE [§ zn 

bell, — the massacre began. Coligny was one of the first victims. 
For three days and nights the massacre went on within the city. 
The number of victims in Paris is variously estimated at from one 
thousand to ten thousand. With the capital cleared of Huguenots, 
orders were issued to the principal cities of France to purge 
themselves in like manner of heretics. In many places the decree 
was disobeyed; but in others the orders were carried out, and 
frightful massacres took place. The number of victims through- 
out the country is unknown; estimates differ widely, running from 
two thousand to a hundred thousand. 

The massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day raised a cry of execra- 
tion in almost every part of the civilized world, among Catholics 
and Protestants alike. Philip II, however, is said to have received 
the news with unfeigned joy; while Pope Gregory XIII caused 
a Te Deum, in commemoration of the event, to be sung in the 
church of St. Mark in Rome. Respecting this it should in justice 
be said that Catholic writers maintain that the Pope acted under 
a misconception of the facts, it having been represented to him 
that the massacre resulted from a thwarted plot of the Huguenots 
against the royal family of France and the Roman Catholic 
Church. 

377. Reign of Henry III ( 1574-^589). Instead of extermi- 
nating heresy in France, the massacre only served to rouse the 
Huguenots to a more determined defense of their faith. Through- 
out the last two years of the reign of Charles IX and the fifteen 
succeeding years of the reign of his brother Henry III the coun- 
try was in a state of turmoil and war. Finally, in 1589, the king, 
who jealous of the growing power and popularity of the Duke of 
Guise had caused him to be assassinated, was himself struck down 
by the avenging dagger of a Dominican monk. With him ended 
the House of Valois. 

378. Accession of Henry IV (i589). Henry of Bourbon, 
king of Navarre, who for many years had been the most promi- 
nent leader of the Huguenots, now came to the throne as the first 
of the Bourbon kings. His accession lifted into prominence one 
of the most celebrated royal houses in European history. The 



§379] 



HENRY IV TURNS CATHOLIC 



339 



political story of France and, indeed, of Europe, from this time 
on to the French Revolution, and for some time after that, is in 
great part the story of the House of Bourbon. 

Henry did not secure without a struggle the crown that was his 
by right. The nation, still mainly Catholic, was not ready to 
acquiesce in the accession to the French throne of a Protestant 
prince. The Catholics declared for 
Cardinal Bourbon, Henry's uncle, 
and France was thus kept in the 
swirl of civil war. 

379. Henry IV turns Catholic 
(1593). After the war had gone 
on for about four years the quar- 
rel was closed, for the time being, 
by Henry's becoming a Catholic. 
He was personally liked, even by 
the Catholic chiefs, and he was 
well aware that it was only his 
Huguenot faith that prevented 
theii" being his hearty supporters. 
Hence his resolution to remove, 
by changing his religion, the sole 
obstacle in the way of their ready 
loyalty, and thus to bring peace 
and quiet to distracted France. 

380. The Edict of Nantes (1598). As soon as Henry had 
become the fully acknowledged king of France, he gave himself 
to the work of composing the affairs of his kingdom. The most 
noteworthy of the measures he adopted to this end was the pub- 
lication of the celebrated Edict of Nantes. By this decree the 
Huguenots were secured perfect freedom of conscience and prac- 
tical freedom of worship. All public offices and employments 
were opened to them the same as to Catholics. Moreover, they 
were allowed to retain possession of a number of fortified towns 
as pledges of good faith and as places of defense. Among these 
places was the important city of La Rochelle. 




Fig. 71. 
France. 



Henry IV, King of 
(From a painting by 
F. GoUzius) 



340 THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE [§ 381 

The granting of this edict is memorable for the reason that it 
was the first formal recognition by a great European state of the 
principle of religious toleration and equality. Here, for the first 
time since the triumph of Christianity over paganism in the 
Roman Empire, a great nation makes a serious effort to try to 
get along with two creeds in the state. It was almost a century 
before even England went as far in the way of granting freedom 
of conscience and of worship. 

381. Character of Henry IV's Reign; his Plans and Death. 
With the temporary hushing of the long-continued quarrels of 
the Catholics and Protestants, France entered upon such a period 
of prosperity as she had not known for many years. Henry's 
paternal solicitude for his humblest subjects secured for him the 
title of Father of his People. 

In devising and carrying out his measure of reform, Henry 
was aided by one of the most prudent and sagacious advisers 
that ever strengthened the hands of a prince, — the illustrious 
Duke of Sully (1560-1641). The duke was an author as well 
as a statesman, and in his Memoirs left one of the most valuable 
records we possess of the transactions in which he took so 
prominent a part. 

Towards the close of his reign Henry, feeling strong in his 
resources and secure in his power, began to revolve in his mind 
vast projects for the aggrandizement of France and the weakening 
of her old enemy, the House of Hapsburg, in both its branches.^ 
He was making great preparations for war, when the dagger of 
a fanatic named Ravaillac cut short his life and plans (1610). 

382. Louis XIII (1610-I643); Cardinal Richelieu ^and his 
Policy. The reign of Henry's son and successor, Louis XIII, 
was rendered notable by the ability of his chief minister, Cardinal 
Richelieu (i 585-1 642), the Wolsey of France, one of the most 
remarkable characters of the seventeenth century. For the space 

1 In connection with his designs against the House of Hapsburg, Henry is represented 
in Sully's Alemoirs as having had in mind a most magnificent scheme, — the organization 
of all the Christian states of Europe into a great confederation or commonwealth, and 
the abolition of war by the creation of an international peace tribunal. This scheme is 
known as the " Grand Design." 



§383] 



SIEGE OF LA ROCHELLE 



341 



of eighteen years this ecclesiastic was the actual sovereign of 
France, and swayed the destinies not only of that country but, 
it might almost be said, those of Europe as well. 

Richelieu's policy was twofold: first, to render the authority of 
the French king absolute in France; second, to make the power 
of France supreme in Europe. 

For nearly the lifetime of a generation Richelieu, by intrigue, 
diplomacy, and war, pursued with unrelenting purpose these 
objects of his ambition. In the fol- 
lowing paragraph we shall speak very 
briefly of the cardinal's dealings with 
the Huguenots, which feature of his 
policy alone especially concerns us at 
present. 

383. Siege and Capture of La Ro- 
chelle (1627-1628) ; Political Power 
of the Huguenots broken. In order 
to make supreme and secure the king's 
authority in his own realms, Richelieu 
conceived it to be necessary, as one 
step towards the goal, to break down 
the political power of the Huguenot 
chiefs, who, " Protestants first and 
Frenchmen afterwards," were con- 
stantly challenging the royal author- 
ity and threatening the dismemberment of France. Accordingly, 
he led in person an army to the siege of La Rochelle, which the 
Huguenots were planning to make the capital of an independent 
Protestant commonwealth. After a gallant resistance of more than 
a year the city was compelled to open its gates. 

The Huguenots maintained the struggle a few months longer 
in the south of France, but were finally everywhere reduced to 
submission. The result of the war was the complete destruction 
of the political power of the French Protestants. A treaty of peace 
called the Edict of Grace (1629) left them, however, freedom of 
worship, according to the provisions of the Edict of Nantes. 




Fig. 72. Cardinal Riche- 
lieu. (After the painting by 
Philippe de Chajnpagne) 



342 THE HUGUENOT WARS IN FRANCE [§ 384 

This treaty properly marks the close of the religious wars which 
had now distressed France, intermittently, for two generations. 

384. Richelieu and the Thirty Years' War. When Cardinal 
Richelieu came to the head of affairs in France there was going 
on in Germany the Thirty Years' War. Although Richelieu had 
just crushed French Protestantism as a political force, he now 
gave assistance to the Protestant German princes because their 
success meant the division of Germany and the humiliation of 
Austria. Richelieu did not live to see the end either of the Thirty 
Years' War or of that which he had begun with Spain; but his 
policy, carried out by others, finally resulted, as we shall learn 
hereafter, in the humiliation of both branches of the House of 
Hapsburg and the lifting of France to the first place among the 
powers of Europe. 

Selections, from the Sources. Duke of Sully, Memoirs (Bohn). For a 
short account of the contents of this work, consult Historical Sotcrces i)i Schools 
(Report to the New England History Teachers' Association), pp. 99-102. 
Translations and Rcpritits, vol. iii, No. 3, extracts under " The Reformation in 
France." Robinson, J. H., Readings in Eii7vJ>ean Histoiy, vol. ii, pp. 179-185. 

Secondary Works. Baird, H. M., The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre 
and Theodore Beza. Besant, W., Gaspa>-d de Coligny- Willert, P. F., Heniy 
of iVavaiTe.. Hassall, A., The French People, chaps, x and xi. Lodge, R., 
Richelieit. Parkman, F., Pioneers of Fratice in the iVe7o Jlor/d {ior the Hugue- 
nots in Florida and Brazil, and Champlain and his associates). See also 
Fiske, J., A-^e7(' England and A^ew France, chaps, i-iii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Henry TV's renunciation of the Huguenot 
faith : Willert, P. F., Heniy of Ahivarre, pp. 256-265. 2. The " Grand Design ": 
Mead, E. D,, The Great Design of Hen>y IV. 3. Settlements of Huguenots 
in Brazil and Florida : Parkman, F., Pioneers of Fivnce in the A'ew World, 
pp. 9-179. 



CHAPTER XXV 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR 

(1618-1648) 

385. Nature and Causes of the War. The long and calamitous 
Thirty Years' War was the last great combat between Protestant- 
ism and Catholicism in Europe. It started as a struggle between 
the Protestant and Catholic princes of Germany, but gradually 
involved almost all the states of the continent, degenerating at 
last into a shameful and heartless struggle for power and territory. 

The real cause of the war was the enmity existing between the 
German Protestants and Catholics. But if a more specific cause 
be sought, it will be found in the character of the articles of the 
celebrated Religious Peace of Augsburg (sect. 318). The Catholics 
and Protestants did not interpret alike the provisions of that com- 
promise treaty. Each party by its encroachments gave the other 
occasion for complaint. The Protestants at length formed for 
their mutual protection a league called the Evangelical Union 
(1608). In opposition to the Union, the Catholics formed a 
confederation known as the Holy League (1609). All Germany 
was thus prepared to burst into the flames of a religious war. 

386. The Bohemian Period of the War (16I8-1623). The 
flames that were to desolate Germany for a generation were first 
kindled in Bohemia, where were still smoldering embers of the 
Hussite wars, which two centuries before had desolated that 
land (sect. 235). A church which the Protestants, relying on the 
provisions of a certain royal charter, maintained they had a right 
to build was torn down by the Catholics, and another was closed. 
Expostulations addressed by the reformers to the Emperor 
Matthias, as king of Bohemia, receiving an unsatisfactory reply, 
a body of Bohemian grandees entered the royal castle at Prague 
and threw two of the imperial regents out of the window. This 

343 



344 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR [§387 

hasty proceeding was the beginning of the Thirty Years' War, — 
"the source and cause of all our woes," as wrote one who lived 
in the sad times that followed. 

The Bohemian Protestants now rose in organized revolt and 
drove out the Jesuits. The insurrection, however, was soon 
suppressed by the newly elected Emperor Ferdinand II, who was 
supported by the Catholic League. The leaders of the revolt 
were executed, and the reformed faith in Bohemia was almost 
uprooted. 

387. The Danish Period (1625-I629). Protestantism in Ger- 
many seemed threatened with extinction. The situation filled 
not only the Protestant German princes but all the Protestant 
powers of the North with the greatest alarm. Christian IV, king 
of Denmark, supported by England and the Dutch Netherlands, 
threw himself into the struggle — which was still being carried 
on in a desultory manner — as the champion of German Protes- 
tantism. On the side of the Catholics were two noted com- 
manders, — Tilly, the leader of the forces of the Holy League, 
and Wallenstein, a wealthy Bohemian nobleman, who was the 
commander of the imperial army. What is known as the Danish 
period of the war now began. 

The war, in the main, proved disastrous to the Protestant allies,^ 
and Christian IV was finally constrained to conclude a treaty of 
peace with the Emperor and retire from the struggle. 

388. The Swedish Period (i630-i635). At this moment of 
seeming triumph Emperor Ferdinand was constrained by rising 
discontent and jealousies to dismiss from his service his most 
efficient general, Wallenstein. Only a few months before this, 
Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden, with a veteran and en- 
thusiastic army of sixteen thousand Swedes, had appeared in 
North Germany as the champion of the dispirited and leaderless 
Protestants. Various motives had concurred in leading him thus 
to intervene in the struggle. He was urged to this course by 
his strong Protestant convictions and sympathies. Furthermore, 

1 Among the important episodes of the war were the defeat of the king of Denmark 
by Tilly at Lutter (1626) and the unsuccessful siege of Stralsund by Wallenstein (1628). 



388] 



THE SWEDISH PERIOD 



345 



But the Electors of 
the city should have 



the progress of the imperial arms in North Germany was imperil- 
ing Swedish interests in the Baltic and threatening to establish 
the supremacy of the Austrian Hapsburgs^ over what was re- 
garded by the sovereigns of Sweden as a Swedish lake. 

The Protestant princes' jealousy and distrust of Gustavus now 
contributed to a most terrible disaster. At this moment Tilly 
was besieging the city of Magdeburg. 
Brandenburg and Saxony, from whom 
received help, would not, or 



at least did not, cooperate 
with Gustavus in raising the 
siege. In a short time the 
fated city was taken by storm 
and was given up to sack and 
pillage. Thousands of the in- 
habitants perished miserably. 
Tilly wrote to Ferdinand that 
since the fall of Troy and 
Jerusalem such a victory had 
never been seen. "I am 
sincerely sorry," he adds, 
" that the ladies of your im- 
perial family could not have 
been present as spectators." 

The cruel fate of Magde- 
burg excited the alarm of the Protestant princes. The Electors of 
Brandenburg and Saxony now united their forces with those of 
the Swedish king. Tilly was twice defeated, and in his last battle 
fatally wounded (1632). In the death of Tilly, Ferdinand lost 
his most trustworthy general. 

The imperial cause appeared desperate. There was but one 
man in Germany who could turn the tide of victory that was run- 
ning so strongly in favor of the Swedish monarch. That man was 
Wallenstein; and to him the Emperor now turned. Wallenstein 
agreed to raise an army, provided his control of it should be 

1 Emperor Ferdinand was the head of the House of Hapsburg. 




Fig. 73. Gustavus Adolphus. (From 
a painting by Vandyke) 



346 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR [§ 389 

absolute. Ferdinand was constrained to grant all that his old 
general demanded. Wallenstein now raised his standard, to 
which rallied the adventurers not only of Germany but of all 
Europe as well. 

With an army of forty thousand men obedient to his commands, 
Wallenstein, after numerous marches and countermarches, finally 
risked a battle with Gustavus on the memorable field of Liitzen, 
in Saxony. The Swedes won the day, but lost their leader and 
sovereign (1632). 

We ma}^ sum up the results of Gustavus Adolphus' interven- 
tion in the Thirty Years' War in these words of the historian 
Gindely: "He averted the overthrow with which Protestantism 
was threatened in Germany." 

Notwithstanding the death of their great king and commander, 
the Swedes did not withdraw from the war. Hence the struggle 
went on, the advantage being for the most part with the Prot- 
estant allies. Ferdinand, at just this time, was embarrassed 
by the suspicious movements of his general, Wallenstein. Be- 
coming convinced that he was meditating the betrayal of the 
imperial cause, the Emperor caused him to be assassinated (1634). 
This event marks very nearly the end of the Swedish period of 
the war. 

389. The Swedish-French Period (i635-i648). Had it not 
been for the selfish and ambitious interference of France, the 
woeful war which had now desolated Germany for half a genera- 
tion might here have come to an end, for both sides were weary 
of it and ready for negotiations of peace. But Richelieu was not 
willing that the war should end until the House of Austria was 
completely humbled. Accordingly, he encouraged the Swedish 
chancellor Oxenstiern, as he had Gustavus, to carry on the war, 
promising him the aid of the French armies. 

The war thus lost in large part its original character of a con- 
tention between the Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany, 
and became a political struggle between the House of Austria 
and the House of Bourbon, in which the former was fighting for 
existence, the latter for aggrandizement. 



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§390] THE PEACE OF WESTPHALIA 347 

And so the miserable war went on year after year. It had 
become a heartless and conscienceless struggle for spoils. The 
Swedes fought to fasten their hold upon the mouths of the Ger- 
man rivers, the French to secure a grasp upon the Rhine lands. 
The earlier actors in the drama at length passed from the scene, 
but their parts were carried on by others. 

390. The Peace of Westphalia (i648). The war was finally 
ended by the celebrated Peace of Westphalia.^ The chief articles 
of this important peace may be made to fall under two heads, — 
those relating to territorial boundaries and those respecting 
religion. 

As to the first, these cut short in three directions the actual or 
nominal limits of the Holy Roman Empire. Switzerland and the 
United Netherlands were severed from it; for though both of 
these countries had been for a long time practically independent 
of the Empire, this independence had never been acknowledged 
in. any formal way. The claim of France to the three bishoprics 
of Metz, Toul, and Verdun in Lorraine, which places she had held 
for about a century, was confirmed, and all Alsace, save the free 
city of Strasburg, was given to her. 

Sweden, already a great maritime power, was given territories 
in North Germany — Western Pomerania and other lands — which 
greatly enhanced her influence by giving her command of the 
mouths of three important German rivers, — the Oder, the Elbe, 
and the Weser. But these lands were not given to the Swedish 
king in full sovereignty; they still remained a part of the Ger- 
manic body, and the king of Sweden through his relation to 
them became a prince of the Empire and entitled to a seat in 
the German Diet. 

The changes within the Empire were many, and some of them 
important. Brandenburg, the nucleus of a future great state, 
especially received considerable additions of territory. She got 
Eastern Pomerania and also valuable ecclesiastical lands. 

1 To facilitate matters the commissioners were divided into two bodies, one holding 
its sessions at Osnabriick, and the other at Miinster, both Westphalian cities. The articles 
of the peace were arranged only after four years of discussion and negotiation. 



348 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR [§ 391 

The different states of the Empire — they numbered over four 
hundred, counting the free imperial cities — were left virtually 
independent of the imperial authority. This continued the Em- 
pire as merely a loose confederation, and postponed to a distant 
future the unification of the German peoples. 

The articles respecting religion were even more important than 
those which established the metes and bounds of the different 
states. Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists were all put upon the 
same footing. Every prince, with some reservations, was to have 
the right to make his religion the religion of his people and to 
banish all who refused to adopt the established creed; but such 
nonconformists were to have five years in which to emigrate. This 
arrangement was known as the princes' "Right of Reformation" 
and the subjects' "Right of Emigration."^ 

These were some of the most important provisions of the noted 
Peace of Westphalia. For more than two centuries they formed 
the fundamental law of Germany, and established a balance of 
power between the European states which, though it was disre- 
garded and disturbed by Louis XIV of France, was in general 
maintained until the great upheaval of the French Revolution. 

391. Effects of the War upon Germany. It is impossible to 
picture the wretched condition in which the Thirty Years' War left 
Germany. When the struggle began, the population of the country 
was thirty millions; when it ended, twelve millions. Two thirds 
of the personal property had been destroyed. Many of the once 
large and flourishing cities were reduced to "mere shells." The 
Duchy of Wiirtemberg, which had half a million inhabitants at 
the commencement of the war, at its close had barely fifty thou- 
sand. The once powerful Hanseatic League was virtually broken 
up. On every hand were the charred remains of the hovels of the 
peasants and the palaces of the nobility. Vast districts lay waste 
without an inhabitant. The very soil in many regions had reverted 
to its primitive wildness. The lines of commerce were broken, 
and some trades and industries swept quite out of existence. 

1 The history of the Palatinate illustrates the workings of this provision of the 
peace : in the space of sixty years the people of that principality were compelled by their 
successive rulers to change their religion four times. But this was an exceptional case. 



§ 391] EFFECTS OF THE WAR 349 

The effects upon the fine arts, upon science, learning, and morals, 
were even more lamentable. Painting, sculpture, and architecture 
had perished. The cities which had been the home of all these 
arts lay in ruins. Poetry had ceased to be cultivated. Education 
was entirely neglected. For the lifetime of a generation men 
had been engaged in the business of war and had allowed their 
children to grow up in absolute ignorance. Moral law was forgot- 
ten. Vice, nourished by the licentious atmosphere of the camp, 
reigned supreme.^ Thus civilization in Germany, which had begun 
to develop with so much promise, received a check from which it 
did not begin to recover, so benumbed were the very senses of 
men, for a generation and more. 

To all these evils were added those of political disunion and 
weakness. The title of Emperor still continued to be borne 
by a member of the House of Austria, but it was only an empty 
name. By the Peace of Westphalia the Germanic body lost 
eyen that little cohesion which had begun to manifest itself 
between its different parts, and became simply a loose assem- 
blage of virtually independent states. Thus weakened, Ger- 
many lost her independence as a nation, while the subjects of 
the numerous petty states became the slaves of their ambitious 
and tyrannical rulers. And, worse than all, the overwhelming 
calamities that for the lifetime of a generation had been poured 
out upon the unfortunate land had extinguished the last spark 
of German patriotism. Every sentiment of pride and hope in 
race and country seemed to have become extinct. 

There was at least one offset to so much evil. The excesses and 
horrors of the war inspired the eminent Dutch jurist, Hugo 
Grotius ( 1 583-1 645), to write his great work, The Laws oj War 
and Peace, a work that has been pronounced by high authority 
"the most beneficent of all volumes ever written not claiming divine 
inspiration." A chief aim of the work was to reform the laws 

1 Before the close of the war the number of camp followers on both sides had come 
to exceed that of the fighting men. When on the march the armies resembled the 
migratory hordes of Goths and Vandals that overran the Roman Empire. After the war 
the disbanded soldiers became thieves and brigands, and thousands were executed. 
Germany was pestered by these marauding bands for a full century after the conclusion 
of the Peace of Westphalia. 



350 THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR [§392 

of war, to lessen the atrocities of warfare, and to set limits to the 
"rights" claimed by the victor. The work has had such a pro- 
found influence upon the development of the laws of nations that 
Grotius is regarded as the founder of international law. 

392. Cojiclusion. The Peace of Westphalia is a prominent 
landmark in universal history. It stands at the dividing line of 
two great epochs. It marks the end of the Reformation period 
and the beginning of that of the Political Revolution. Henceforth, 
speaking broadly, men will fight for constitutions, not for creeds. 
We shall find them more intent on questions of civil government 
and of political rights than on questions of Church government 
and of religious dogmas. We shall not often see one nation at- 
tacking another, or one party in a nation assaulting another 
party, on account of a difference in religious opinion.^ 

But in setting the Peace of Westphalia to mark the end of the 
Era of the Reformation, we do not mean to convey the idea that 
men had come to embrace the beneficent doctrine of religious 
toleration. As a matter of fact, no real toleration had yet been 
reached, — nothing save the semblance of toleration. The long 
conflict of a century and more and the vicissitudes of fortune, 
which to-day gave one party the power of the persecutor and 
to-morrow made the same sect the victims of persecution, had 
simply forced all to the practical conclusion that they must toler- 
ate one another, — that one sect must not attempt to put another 
down by force. But it has required the broadening and liberaliz- 
ing lessons of the two centuries and more that have since passed 
to bring men to see, even in part, that the thing they must do is 
the very thing they ought to do, — to make men tolerant not only 
in outward conduct but in spirit. 

With this single word of caution we now pass to the study of 
the Era of the Political Revolution, a period characterized in 
particular by the growth of divine-right kingship and by the great 
struggle between despotic and liberal principles of government. 

1 The Puritan Revolution in England may look like a religious war, but we shall learn 
that it was primarily a political contest, — a struggle against despotism in the state. 



REFERENCES 351 

Selections from the Sources. The student will do well to begin his study 
of the Thirty Years' War by a careful reading of Historical Leaflets (Crozer 
Theological Seminary), No. 5, " The Peace of Augsburg." He will here learn 
how deep-seated and irreconcilable were the differences which divided the 
religious parties in Germany. Robinson, J. H., Readings in Eufvpean History, 
vol. ii, chap. xxix. 

Secondary Works. Gindely, A., History of the Thirty Years' War, 2 vols, 
(the best history for English readers ; chaps, x and xi of vol. ii, bearing upon 
the peace negotiations, are of special interest). Fletcher, C. R. L., Gi/stavns 
Adolphiis and the Struggle of Protestantism for Existence. Gardiner, S. R., 
The Thirty Years' War. Henderson, E. Y.,A Short History of Germany, vol. i, 
chaps, xvii and xviii. Bryce, J., The Holy Roriian Etjipire, chaps, xviii and xix. 
Fisher, G. P., History of the Reformation, chap, xv (summarizes from the 
Protestant side the results of the Reformation); Balmes, ]., European Civili- 
zation; Protestantism and Catholicism compared; and Spaulding, M. J., The 
History of the Protestant Reformation, Parts I and II (contain discussions of 
the subject from the Catholic point of view). 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Condition of Germany at the end of the 
war: Gardiner, S. R., The Thirty Years' Jfiir, pp. 217-221. 2. Hugo Grotius : 
White, A. D., Seven Great Statesmen, pp. 55-110. 3. Some results of the 
Reformation: Seebohm, F., The Era of the Protestant Revolution, pp. 118-233. 



FOURTH PERIOD— THE ERA OF THE 
POLITICAL REVOLUTION 

(From the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, to the Treaty of Versailles, in 1919) 

/. THE AGE OF ABSOLUTE MONARCHY: PREL- 
UDE TO THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION 

(1648-1789) 

CHAPTER XXVI 

THE DOCTRINE OF THE DIVINE RIGHT OF KINGS AND THE 
MAXIMS OF THE ENLIGHTENED DESPOTS 

393. The Theory of the Divine Right of Kings. Throughout 
the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries there was widely held a 
theory of government which during that period probably had as 
great an influence upon the historical development in Europe as 
the theory of the Empire and the Papacy exerted during the 
Middle Ages. This theory is known as the Divine Right of Kings/ 

According to this theory the nation is a great family with the 
king as its divinely appointed head. The duty of the king is to 
govern like a father; the duty of the people is to obey their 
king even as children obey their parents. If the king does wrong, 
is cruel, unjust, this is simply the misfortune of his people; under 
no circumstances is it right for them to rebel against his authority, 
any more than for children to rise against their father. The king 
is responsible to God alone, and to God the people, quietly sub- 
missive, must leave the avenging of all their wrongs. 

1 It was in England and in France that the theory was most logically developed, and it 
was in these countries that it exerted its greatest influence upon the political evolution. 



§393] THEORY OF DIVINE-RIGHT KINGSHIP 353 

This conception of government is so different from our idea of 
it that it will be worth our while to listen to two of the ablest 
champions of the doctrine while they more fully expound it. 

According to the first of these the family is the germ and pro- 
totype of the State. "If we compare the natural rights of a father 
with those of a king/' — it is the old English writer Filmer 
who speaks/ — "we find them all one, without any difference at 
all but only in the latitude or extent of them: as the father over 
one family, so the king, as father over many families, extends his 
care to preserve, feed, clothe, instruct, and defend the whole 
commonwealth. His war, his peace, his courts of justice, and all 
his acts of sovereignty tend only to preserve and distribute to 
every subordinate and inferior father, and to their children, their 
rights and privileges, so that all the duties of a king are summed 
up in an universal fatherly care of his people." 

Heredity points out the legitimate king: "It is unnatural for 
the multitude to choose their governors, or to govern or to par- 
take in the government." 

The power of the hereditary king is absolute: "For as kingly 
power is by the law of God, so it hath no inferior law to 
limit it." 

The king can neither be corrected nor deposed by his subjects: 
"For, indeed, it is the rule of Solomon that 'We must keep the 
king's commandment,' and not say, 'What dost thou?' because 
'where the word of a king is there is power,' and all that he 
pleaseth he will do. . . . Not that it is right for kings to do 
injury, but it is right for them to go unpunished by the people if 
they do it. . . . It will be punishment sufficient for them to 
expect God as a revenger."^ 

"Kings are the ministers of God" — it is the eloquent Bos- 
suet, the court chaplain of Louis XIV, who now speaks^ — "and 

1 In his PatriarcJia (see Sources at end of chapter). 

2 Filmer is here quoting the words of the celebrated English jurist Bracton 
(d. 1268). All that the people can do when the king misuses his authority is to petition 
him " to amend his fault " — and " to pray to God." 

3 In his Politique tiree des propres paroles de P &criture Sainte (QLuvres completes, 
vol. xxiii, Paris, 1875), P- 533- 



354 DIVINE-RIGHT KINGSHIP [§394 

his vicegerents on the earth." "The throne of a king is not the 
throne of a man, but the throne of God himself. . . . The- per- 
son of kings is sacred, and it is sacrilege to harm them."^ "They 
are gods, and partake in some fashion of the divine independence." - 

With Filmer, Bossuet maintains the subject's duty of passive 
obedience. He who does not obey his prince is worthy of death 
as the enemy of society. Rebellion against kings is sacrilege: 
"The holy anointment is on them and the high office they exer- 
cise in the name of God protects them from all insult." 

At first the upholders of this theory of the nature and powers 
of the kingly office were apt to seek support for it in Biblical 
texts; but later its defenders came to rely more on pure argu- 
ment, as is illustrated by Kilmer's syllogism: "What is natural to 
man exists by divine right; kingship is natural to man; there- 
fore, kingship exists by divine right." ^ 

Before the close of the period upon which we here enter, we 
shall see how this theory of the divine right of kings worked out 
in practice, — how dear it cost both kings and people, and how 
the people by the strong logic of revolution demonstrated that 
they have a divine and inalienable right to govern themselves/ 

394. History of the Doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings. 
This theory that kings rule by divine right has a history well 
worth tracing. Among primitive peoples, like the early Greeks, 
we find the king ruling by divine right, — by right of his descent 
from the gods. In Egypt the Pharaoh was regarded as partaking 
of the divine nature. In ancient Judea the king was the Lord's 
anointed, and ruled as his vicegerent on earth. In the days of 

1 Bossuet; Politique iircc dcs propres paroles dc PEcrituir, p. 534. 

2. Ibid. p. 559. See Psalms Ixxxii. 6. 

s See Figgis, The Tkeoiy of the Divine Right of Kings, p. 153. 

■* There was much in the history of the Middle Ages to convince men that absolute 
monarchy, if not a divinely appointed form of government, was at least the best form. 
Every other form had been tried and found wanting, having issued either in tyranny or in 
anarchy. Witness the intolerable oppression of the aristocratic government of the feudal 
lords ; witness the tyranny of the theocratic government of the priesthood ; witness the tur- 
bulence of society under the democratic regime of the Italian cities. Peace and security 
within the State had been secured only through the growth of the royal power. Hence the 
political axiom of this age, an age just escaping from feudal anarchy, was that of the Homeric 
( i reeks, — " The rule of many is not a good thing ; let there be one leader only, one king." 



§ 395] CHARACTER OF ABSOLUTE SOVEREIGNS 355 

the Roman emperors their subjects in the East were prone to 
regard the head of the Empire as set apart from ordinary 
men. They built temples in honor of " the divine Caesar." 

But to trace the origin of the doctrine as applied to kings of 
modern times, we need not go farther back than to the establish- 
ment of the mediaeval Papacy. The popes, as we have learned, 
ruled by what may be termed divine right. All acknowledged 
their office and authority to be of divine origin and appointment. 
But when the emperors of German origin got into controversy 
with the popes in regard to the relation of the imperial to the 
papal power, then it was that the supporters of the emperors 
framed the counter theory of the divine origin of the imperial 
authority. Thus Dante in his De Monarchia argues for the 
supernatural character of the imperial power, and maintains that 
the Emperor rules as much by divine right as does the Pope. 
Then later in the fourteenth century, after the Empire had been 
practically destroyed by the Papacy and the kings had taken up 
the fight against the Papal See, their supporters naturally began 
to preach the doctrine of the divine nature of the royal authority. 
This was the starting point of the theory in its modern form. 

When finally the Reformation came and with it even still 
keener strife between the lay rulers of the revolted nations and 
the Roman See, then the theory of the divine nature of the royal 
power received perforce a great expansion. For when the Pope 
excommunicated a heretic king and exhorted his subjects to take 
up arms against him, then the royalist writers and preachers pro- 
claimed more loudly than ever and with passionate fervor the 
doctrine of the divine right of princes and the wickedness of 
disobedience and rebellion. Fostered in this way, the doctrine 
of the sacred character of kingship and the virtue of passive 
obedience in the subject struck deep and firm root. 

395. Character of the Absolute Sovereigns and their 
Relation to the Political Revolution. What use did the kings 
make of the vast and unlimited authority with which the circum- 
stances of history and the growth of political theory had invested 
them? As a class, they made a betrayal of the great trust. Too 



356 DIVINE-RIGHT KINGSHIP [§396 

many of them acted upon the maxim of Louis XIV of France, — 
"Self-aggrandizement is at once the noblest and the most agree- 
able occupation of kings." They seemed to think that their sub- 
jects were made for their use; that the public strength and the 
public revenues might be freely used by them for the attainment 
of purely personal ends, the promotion of purely personal ambi- 
tions. War became a royal pastime. A great part of the bloody 
wars of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which centuries 
may be regarded as covering roughly the age of absolute mon- 
archy, were wars that originated in frivolous personal jealousies, 
in wicked royal ambitions, or in disputes respecting dynastic suc- 
cession. So generally did the wars of this period spring from 
questions of the latter nature, that by some historians the age is 
called the Era of Dynastic Wars.^ The teachings of The Prince 
of Machiavelli ruled the period. 

Now, all this misuse of royal power, all these unholy wars with 
their trains of attendant evils, did much to discredit divine-right 
kingship and to bring in government by the people. " Bad kings 
help us," Emerson affirms, "if only they are bad enough." Many 
of the kings of this period were bad enough to be supremely 
helpful to us. It was during this age of the kings that the forces 
set loose by the Renaissance and the Reformation engendered 
the tempest which overwhelmed forever divine-right kingship and 
its gilded appendage of privileged aristocracy. 

396. The Enlightened Despots. But not all the kings of this 
age were imbecile or wicked. There were among them many wise 
and benevolent rulers. Especially during the latter part of the 
eighteenth century did there appear monarchs known as the 
Enlightened Despots, who, under the influence of the teachings 

1 There is need of caution here, however. Not all the wars of this age were frivolous, 
dynastic, or personal. There were, as we shall see, wars involving great issues and prin- 
ciples, — questions of systems of government and forms of civilization. The war in Eng- 
land between the Parliament and the king was the first act in the drama of the Political 
Revolution; and the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) was a struggle involving as momen- 
tous questions as were ever arbitrated by the sword. Commercial and colonial interests 
too were coming to be more generally the concern of governments, and some of the 
greatest wars of the eighteenth century had their origin in national jealousies touching 
trade and colonies. 



§396] THE ENLIGHTENED DESPOTS 357 

of French philosophy, came to entertain reasonable views of 
their duties and of their obligations to their subjects. 

These sovereigns did not give up the idea that unlimited mon- 
archy is the best form of government and that the people should 
have no part in public affairs. They sincerely believed that the 
power of the king should be unlimited, but they emphasized the 
doctrine that this power should be exercised solely in the interest 
of the people. The public revenues should be expended on 
public works, and public officials should be appointed solely on 
the ground of their ability and fitness. Thus the idea of the royal 
power being a trust, the royal office a stewardship, was made 
prominent. The king became the servant of his people. 

The great place which the rulers of this disposition held in the 
history of the century immediately preceding the French Revo- 
lution is indicated by these words of the historian Professor H. 
Morse Stephens: "The most characteristic feature in government 
of the eighteenth century," he says, "was the existence and the 
work of the enlightened despots." 

Most prominent of the sovereigns deemed worthy a place 
among the Enlightened Despots are Catherine the Great of Russia, 
Frederick the Great of Prussia, and Joseph II of Austria. Con- 
cerning them and their work we shall have something to say in 
following chapters. It will suffice here if we simply "observe that 
the issue of this great experiment in government illustrated anew 
what had been demonstrated by the rule of the Tyrants in the 
cities of ancient Greece and by that of the Caesars at Rome, — 
namely, that absolute power cannot safely be lodged in the hands 
of a single person. It is certain sooner or later to be misused. 

As it has been well put, absolute power in a single person is a 
good thing when joined with perfect wisdom and perfect good- 
ness. But unfortunately these qualifications of the ideal autocrat 
are seldom found united in the same individual, and still less 
seldom are they transmitted from father to son. It is at just this 
point that absolute hereditary monarchy, as a practical form of 
government, breaks down beyond hope and without remedy. 



CHAPTER XXVII 

THE ASCENDANCY OF FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV 

(1643-1715) 

397. Louis XIV the Typical Divine-Right King. Louis XIV 
of France stands as the representative of divine-right monarchy. 
He shall himself expound to us his conception of government.^ 
These are his words: "To attribute to subjects the right of 
forming resolutions and of giving commands to their sovereign 
is to pervert the true order of things. It is to the head alone 
that pertains the right to deliberate and to resolve upon; the 
whole duty of subjects consists in the carrying into effect of the 
commands given them."- "Kings are absolute lords; to them 
belongs naturally the full and free disposal of all the property 
of their subjects, whether they be churchmen or laymen."^ "For 
subjects to rise against their prince, however wicked and oppres- 
sive he may be, is always infinitely criminal. God, who has given 
kings to men, has willed that they should be revered as his lieu- 
tenants, and has reserved to Himself alone the right to review 
their conduct. His will is that he who is born a subject should 
obey without question."'* 

The doctrine here set forth Louis is said to have expressed in 
this terser form: UEtat c'est moi, "I am the State." He may 
never have uttered these exact words, but the famous epigram at 

1 It should be noted that Louis' subjects, at least the great majority of them, also 
believed in government by one, — and not without reason. They had had sorry experi- 
ence with government by many, under the regime of the nobles. Of government by all, 
by themselves, it was not possible for them to have any clear conception, if any conception 
at all. It needed a hundred years and more of autocratic misrule and oppression to call 
into existence that revolutionary idea. 

2 CEiivrcs de Louis A'/F (Paris, iSo6), tome ii, p. 26. 

8 Ibid. p. 121. Louis adds, however, that what kings take from their subjects they 
should use as wise stewards, — that is to say, for the promotion of the public welfare. 
4 Ibid. p. 336, 



§ 398] THE ADMINISTRATION OF MAZARIN 



359 



least embodies perfectly his ideas of kingship. In his own view 
he was by divine commission the sole legislator, judge, and execu- 
tive of the French nation. 

This theory of government thus expounded by Louis was, in- 
deed, as we have seen, no novel doctrine to the Europe of the 
seventeenth century; but Louis was such an ideal autocrat that 
somehow he made autocratic 

r 



government attractive. Other 
rulers imitated him, and it be- 
came the prevailing theory 
that kings have a "divine 
right" to rule and that the 
people should have no part 
at all in government. 

398. The Administration 
of Mazarin (i643-i66i) ; 
Louis becomes his Own 
Prime Minister. The religious 
war in Germany was still in 
progress when, in 1643, Louis 
XIII died, leaving the vast 
authority which his great 
minister Cardinal Richelieu 
had done so much to consoli- 
date and strengthen, as an in- 
heritance to his.little son Louis, 
a mere child of five years. 

During th6 prince's minority the government was in the hands 
of his mother, Anne of Austria, as regent. She chose as her chief 
minister an Italian ecclesiastic. Cardinal IVIazarin, who in his ad- 
ministration of affairs followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, 
Richelieu, carrying out with great ability the foreign policy of that 
minister.^ Before his death the House of Austria in both its 
branches had been humiliated and crippled, and the House of 
Bourbon was ready to assume leadership in European affairs. 

1 See sect. 382. 




Fig. 74. Louis XIV. (After a paint- 
ing by Philippe de C/ia/;ipag/ie) 



36o FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV [§ 399 

Mazarin died in 1661. Upon this event Louis, now twenty- 
three years of age, calling together the heads of the various 
departments of the government, said to them that in the future 
he should himself attend to affairs. He then charged the secre- 
taries not to sign any paper, not even a passport, without his 
express commands. From this time on for more than half a cen- 
tury Louis was his own prime minister. He gave personal atten- 
tion to every matter, even the most trivial. Probably no wearer 
of a crown, Philip II of Spain possibly excepted, ever worked 
harder at " the trade of a king," as he himself designated his em- 
ployment. He had able men about him, but they planned and 
worked — and sometimes chafed — under his minute directions 
and tireless superintendence. 

399. Louis' Chief Aims. The history of Louis' long reign will 
present coherence and unity only as we fix clearly in view the 
ends towards which his efforts were mainly directed. His first 
aim was to make himself absolute master in his own kingdom. In 
his " Instructions to the Dauphin " he says, " The necessary basis 
of all other reforms was the rendering of my own will absolute." 
This basis was well laid. Under Louis there was but one will in 
France, — the will of the king. The nobility, the States-General, 
all local authorities, the Parlement of Paris,' the Church, — all these 
classes and bodies were shorn of the last remnants of political 
influence and power and rendered servilely submissive to the crown. 

Louis' second aim was to secure for France the headship of 
Europe. We shall see in how many sanguinary wars Louis in- 
volved almost all Europe in his efforts to realize this object of 
his ambition. 

400. The Wars of Louis XIV. During the period of his per- 
sonal administration of the government, Louis XIV was engaged 
in four great wars: (i) a war respecting the Spanish Netherlands; 

1 This was a French court of justice which attempted to assume political functions, 
— which sometimes seemed to aspire to become for France what the English Parliament 
was for England. One of its duties was to register the royal edicts, which were given 
validity only by such registration. Sometimes the court hesitated to register the king's 
decrees and made remonstrances. Louis ordained that the court should register all de- 
crees without delay ; it might make remonstrances afterwards. The court was forced to 
bow to the royal will. 



§ 401] WAR OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS 361 

(2) a war with the Protestant Netherlands; (3) the War of the 
Palatinate, or of the League of Augsburg; and (4) the War of 
the Spanish Succession. All these wars were, on the part of the 
French monarch, wars of conquest and aggression, or wars pro- 
voked by his ambitious and encroaching policy. The most in- 
veterate enemy of Louis during all this period was the Dutch 
Republic, the representative and champion of liberty. 

40L The War concerning the Spanish Netherlands (i667- 
1668). Upon the death in 1665 of Philip IV of Spain, Louis 
laid claim, in the name of his wife, to portions of the Spanish 
Netherlands and led an army into the country. The Hollanders 
were naturally alarmed, fearing that 'Louis would also want to 
annex their country to his dominions. Accordingly they effected 
what was called the Triple Alliance with England and Sweden, 
checked the French king in his career of conquest, and forced 
him to give up much of the territory he had seized. He retained, 
however, a number of Flemish towns along the French frontier, 
which he made by extensive fortifications, planned by his cele- 
brated military engineer Vauban, the strong outposts of his 
kingdom in that direction. 

402. The War with the Protestant Netherlands (i672-i678). 
The second war of the French king was against the United 
Netherlands. His attack upon this little state was prompted by 
a variety of motives. In the first place, the Hollanders' interven- 
tion in the preceding war had stirred his resentment. Then these 
Dutchmen represented everything to which he was opposed, — 
self-government. Protestantism, and free thought. 

In this war Louis found himself confronted by the armies of 
half of Europe. For several years the struggle was waged on 
land and sea, — in the Netherlands, all along the Rhine, upon 
the English Channel, in the Mediterranean, and on the coasts of 
the New World. By the terms of the treaty^ which ended the 
war, Louis gave up his conquests in Holland, but kept a large 
number of- towns and fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, be- 
sides the free county of Burgundy on his eastern frontier. 

1 The Peace of Nimeguen, 1678. 



362 FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV [§ 403 

Thus Louis came out of this tremendous struggle with en- 
hanced reputation and fresh acquisitions of territory. People 
began to call him the "Grand Monarch"; we shall see directly 
by what acts he justified their judgment in conferring upon him 
this title. 

403. Louis seizes the City of Strasburg (lesi). Ten years 
of comparative peace now followed for western Europe. Among 
the many indefensible acts of Louis during this period there 
were two which deserve special notice, since, while marking the 
culmination of Louis' power and illustrating his arrogant and 
unjust use of that power, they also mark the turning point in 
his fortunes. 

The first of these was the seizure of the free city of Strasburg 
and a score of other important places on the left bank of the 
Rhine belonging to the Empire. Strasburg was of supreme 
military importance to Louis on account of her strong forti- 
fications, which rendered her mistress of the Rhine. 

The audacity of Louis' procedure so dazed every one that no 
effective protest was made. Besides, at just this time the Em- 
peror was preoccupied with the Turks. In 1683 they laid siege 
to Vienna. All Christendom awaited anxiously the outcome. 
Fortunately the siege was raised by the celebrated Polish king, 
John Sobieski, and the House of Austria was saved. But the 
Turks continued to threaten the eastern territories of Austria, so 
that it was impossible for the Emperor to intervene in any effec- 
tive way to prevent Louis from consumm.ating his schemes for the 
absorption of the Rhenish lands which he needed to round out his 
dominions in that quarter. 

404. The Revocation of the Edict of Nantes (less). The 
second act to which we refer — an act the injustice of which 
was only equaled by its folly — was the revocation of the Edict 
of Nantes, the gracious decree by which Henry IV guaranteed 
religious freedom to the French Protestants (sect. 380). 

Louis' motives in persecuting his Protestant subjects were 
essentially the same as those which had led Philip III of Spain 
to expel from his dominions his Morisco subjects. He believed 



§405] WAR OF THE PALATINATE 363 

the extirpation of heresy to be a service pleasing to God, and 
he coveted the honor of rooting it out of France. 

The fateful royal decree revoking the edict of toleration was 
issued in 1685. By this cruel measure all the Protestant churches 
were closed, and every Huguenot who refused to embrace the 
Catholic faith was outlawed. The persecution which the Hugue- 
nots had been enduring, and which was now greatly increased in 
violence, is known as the Dragonnades, from the circumstance 
that dragoons were quartered upon the Protestant families, with 
full permission to annoy and persecute them in every way ^^short 
of violation and death," to the end that the victims of these out- 
rages might be constrained to recant, which multitudes did. 

Great numbers, however, of the persecuted Huguenots, in brave 
disregard of the royal prohibition to leave the country, evading 
the vigilance of the police, made their way out of France to 
neighboring lands. It is estimated that before the end of the 
seventeenth century Louis had lost as many as three hundred 
thousand of the most skillful and industrious of his subjects. 

The effects upon France of the exodus were most disastrous. 
Several of the most important and flourishing of the French indus- 
tries were ruined, while the manufacturing interests of other coun- 
tries, particularly those of the Protestant Netherlands, England, 
and Brandenburg, were correspondingly benefited by the energy, 
skill, and capital which the exiles carried to them. Many of the 
fugitive Huguenots ultimately found new homes in remote South 
Africa, and their descendants contributed greatly to the strength 
of the republics of the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. 
Many others sought refuge in America; and no other class of 
emigrants, save the Puritans of England, cast 

Such healthful leaven 'mid the elements 
That peopled the new world. ^ 

405. The War of the Palatinate, or of the League of Augs- 
burg (1688-1697). The indirect results of the revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes were quite as calamitous to France as were the 

1 See Baird, Histor-y of the Hzigiienot Emigration to America^ 



364 FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV [§ 406 

direct results. The indignation that the measure awakened among 
the Protestant nations contributed to enable William of Orange 
to organize a formidable confederacy against Louis, known as. 
the League of Augsburg. 

Louis resolved to attack the confederates. Seeking a pretext for 
beginning hostilities, he laid claim, on the part of his sister-in-law, 
to properties in the Palatinate, and hurried a large army into the 
country, which was quickly overrun. But being unable to hold 
the conquests he had made, Louis ordered that the country be 
laid waste. Among the places reduced to ruins were the historic 
towns of Heidelberg, Spires, and Worms. Even fruit trees, vines, 
and crops were destroyed. LTpwards of a hundred thousand peas- 
ants were rendered homeless. 

Another and more formidable coalition, known as the Grand 
Alliance, was now formed against Louis (1689). It embraced 
England, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Savoy, the Emperor, the Elec- 
tor Palatine, and the Electors of Bavaria and Saxony. 

For ten years almost all Europe was a great battlefield. It was 
very much such a struggle as that waged a century later by the 
allied monarchies of Europe against Napoleon, when they fought 
for the independence of the continent. 

Both sides at length becoming weary of the contest and almost 
exhausted in resources, the struggle was closed by the Peace of 
Ryswick (1697). There was a mutual surrender of conquests 
made during the course of the war, and Louis had also to give up 
many of the places he had seized before the beginning of the 
conflict. He managed, however, to retain, along with some other 
places, the important city of Strasburg. 

406. War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). Barely 
three years had passed after the Peace of Ryswick before the 
great powers of Europe were involved in another war, known 
as the War of the Spanish Succession. 

The proximate circumstances out of which the war grew were 
these. In 1700 the king of Spain, Charles II, the last male 
descendant in Spain of the great Emperor Charles V, died, leaving 
his crown — for he was childless — to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a 



GtS 



fi>,a., 



after tlie Treaties of 

UTRECHT AND RASTADT 

1713-1714 




§ 407] DEATH OF THE KING 365 

grandson of Louis XIV. The duke, a mere lad of seventeen years, 
assumed the bequeathed crown with the title of Philip V, and 
thus became the founder of the Bourbon dynasty in Spain. "There 
are no longer any Pyrenees," is the way in which Louis is re- 
ported to have expressed his exultation over this virtual union 
of France and Spain. 

France, through Spanish favor, might also now easily become 
powerful in the colonial world and realize her dream of a great 
colonial empire. The common danger led to the forming of a sec- 
ond Grand Alliance ^ against France, a main object, of which was 
to eject Philip from the Spanish throne and to seat thereon an 
Austrian prince. 

For thirteen years all Europe was shaken with war.- The 
struggle was ended by the treaties of Utrecht (1713) and Rastadt 
(1714). By the provisions of these treaties the Bourbon prince 
Philip was left upon the Spanish throne, but on the condition 
that there should never be a union of the French and Spanish 
crowns upon the same head. His dominions also were pared 
away on every side. Gibraltar and the island of ]\Iinorca were 
ceded to England; Milan, Naples, the island of Sardinia, and the 
Catholic Netherlands were given to Austria; and Sicily to the 
Duke of Savoy. Spain was thus shorn of nearly half her territories 
in Europe. 

France also suffered in her colonial possessions and claims, 
being forced to cede Nova Scotia (Acadia) to England and to 
admit her sovereignty over Newfoundland and the Hudson Bay 
Territory." 

407. Death of the King (1715). It was amidst troubles, per- 
plexities, and afflictions that Louis XIV's long and eventful reign 
drew to a close. The heavy and constant taxes necessary to meet 
the expenses of his numerous wars, to maintain an extravagant 
court, and to furnish means for the erection of costly buildings, 

1 The alliance embraced at first England, the Protestant Netherlands, Austria, and 
other German states, and later was joined by Portugal and Savoy. 

2 The two greatest generals of the allies were the English Duke of Marlborough and 
Prince Eugene of Savoy, who was in the imperial service. 

3 For the celebrated clause concerning the " Assiento," see sect. 479. 



366 FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV [§ 408 

had bankrupted the country, and the cries of his wretched sub- 
jects, clamoring for bread, could not be shut out of the royal 
chamber. Death, too, had invaded the palace, striking down the 
Dauphin and also two grandsons of Louis, leaving as the nearest 
heir to the throne his great-grandson, a mere child. On the 
morning of September i, 171 5, the Grand Monarch breathed his 
last, bequeathing to this boy of five years a kingdom overwhelmed 
with debt and filled with misery, with threatening vices, and 
dangerous discontent. He seemed at the last moment to be 
sensible of the mistakes and faults of his reign, for his dying 
charge to the little prince who was to succeed him was as follows: 
"Do not follow the bad example which I have set you. I have 
undertaken war too lightly, and have continued it from vanity. 
Do not imitate me, but be a pacific prince, and let your chief 
occupation be to relieve your subjects.'' 

The tidings of the king's death, instead of being received by 
his subjects with tears, was received with an outburst of rejoicing. 
A satirist of the time declared that " the people had shed too 
many tears during his life to have any left for his death." 

408. The Court of Louis XIV. The court of the Grand Mon- 
arch was the most extravagantly magnificent that Europe has 
ever seen. Never since Nero spread his Golden House over the 
burnt district of Rome and ensconcing himself amid its luxurious 
appointments exclaimed, "Now I am housed as a man ought to 
be," had prince or king so ostentatiously lavished upon himself the 
wealth of an empire. Louis had half a dozen palaces, the most 
costly of which was that at Versailles. Here he created, in what 
was originally a desert, a beautiful miniature universe of which he 
was the center, the resplendent sun — he chose the sun as his 
emblem — around which all revolved and from which all received 
light and life. Upon the central building and its adjuncts he spent 
fabulous sums, — what would probably be equal to more than a 
hundred million dollars with us. Here were gathered the beauty, 
wit, and learning of France. The royal household numbered over 
fifteen thousand persons, all living in costly and luxurious idleness 
at the expense of the people. 



§409] LITERATURE UNDER LOUIS XIV 367 

One element of this enormous family was the great lords of the 
old feudal aristocracy. Dispossessed of their ancient power and 
wealth, they were content now to fill a place in the royal house- 
hold, — to be the king's pensioners and the elegant embellishment 
of his court. "A military staff on a furlough for a century or 
more, around a commander-in-chief who gives fashionable enter- 
tainments, is," says Taine, "the principle and summary of the 
habits of society under the ancient regime." 

As can easily be imagined, the court life of this period was 
shamefully corrupt. Vice, however, was gilded. The most scanda- 
lous immoralities were made attractive by the glitter of superficial 
accomplishment and by exquisite suavity and polish of manner. 
But notwithstanding its insincerity and immorality, the brilliancy 
of the court of Louis dazzled all Europe. The neighboring courts 
imitated its manners and emulated its extravagances. In all 
matters of taste and fashion France gave laws to the continent, 
and the French language became the court language of the 
civilized world. 

409. Literature under Louis XIV, Although Louis himself 
was not a scholar, he gave a most liberal encouragement to men 
of letters, thereby making his reign the Augustan Age of French 
literature. In this patronage Louis was not unselfish. He honored 
and befriended poets and writers of every class, because thus 
he extended the reputation of his court. These writers, pensioners 
of his bounty, filled all Europe with praises of the great king, and 
thus made the most ample and grateful return to Louis for his 
favor and liberality. 

Almost every species of literature was cultivated by the French 
writers of this era, yet it was in the province of the drama 
that the most eminent names appeared. The three great names 
here are those of Corneille (i 606-1 684), Racine (i 639-1 699), 
and Moliere^ (162 2-1 673). 

1 Among other world-renowned French writers, philosophers, prelates, and orators 
who adorned the age of Louis XIV were Descartes (1596-1650), the father of modern 
philosophy; Pascal (1623-1662), the prodigy in mathematics and the author of the 
famous Provincial Letters; La Bruyere (1645-1696), novehst and unrivaled depicter of 
character and manners; Madame de S6vigne (1626-1696), the brilliant letter writer, 



368 FRANCE UNDER LOUIS XIV [§ 410 

410. Relation of the Reign of Louis XIV to the Revolution 
of 1789. "If it be asked," says the historian Von Hoist, "who 
did the most towards the destruction of the ancient regime, the 
correct answer is, beyond all question, Louis XIV, its greatest 
representative." Louis discredited absolute monarchy by his 
shameful misuse of his unlimited power. His many wars and his 
extravagant expenditures on an idle and profligate court weighed 
France down with crushing and intolerable burdens. It was the 
vast mass of misery and suff-ering created by his acting on the 
monstrous doctrine that "the many are made for the use of one" 
that did much to prepare the minds and hearts of the French 
people for the great Revolution. 

411. Decline of the French Monarchy under Louis XV 
(1715-1774). The supremacy of the House of Bourbon passed 
away forever with Louis XIV. In passing from the reign of the 
Grand Monarch to that of his successor, we pass from the strong- 
est and outwardly most brilliant reign in French history to the 
weakest' and most humiliating. Louis XV was a despot without 
possessing any of the possible virtues of a despot. During his 
reign the French nation made a swift descent towards the abyss 
of the Revolution of 1789. 

For the first eight years of the reign affairs were in the hands 
of the Duke of Orleans, who was regent during the king's minor- 
ity. He was a corrupt man, a man absolutely shameless in his 
vices. Probably Rome in the days of the worst Caesars witnessed 
nothing in the way of reckless and riotous living to surpass what 
France witnessed under what is known as the Regency. 

In 1723 the prince's minority ended and he assumed the gov- 
ernment. The atmosphere in, which he had been brought up had 
wholly corrupted a nature seemingly prone to evil. He was com- 
pletely under the influence of his mistresses, of whom the most 
notorious was Madame de Pompadour. The loves, the hates, and 

whose correspondence forms to-day a prized portion of French literature and constitutes 
a treasure of information for the court historian; Bossuet (1627-1704), the eloquent 
court preacher and champion of divine-right l<ingship ; and Fenelon (1651-1715), the 
distinguished prelate and author of The Adventures of Telemaclms, a disguised satire on 
the reign of Louis XIV. 



§ 411] REFERENCES 369 

the caprices of this woman were for nineteen years a chief factor 
in the decision of the weightiest matters of war and of peace. 
The highest appointments in the army and the navy were dictated 
by her. For a long series of years she was practically the prime 
minister of France. 

The conditions surrounding the throne being of this nature, it 
is not surprising that under Louis XV the influence, power, and 
prestige of France sensibly declined. She took part, indeed, but 
usually with injury to her military reputation, in all the wars of 
this period. The most important of these for France was the 
Seven Years' War (i 756-1 763), known in America as the French 
and Indian War, which resulted in the loss to France of Canada 
in the New World and of her Indian empire in the Old. 

Selections from the Sources. Memoirs of the Duke of Saint-Simon (trans, 
by Bayle St. John). Nowhere else can be found so Hvely and entertaining 
an account of life at court under Louis XIV and the Regency as here. For 
glimpses of other sides of the life of the times read the Letters of Madame de 
Sevigne, accessible in different editions. These delightful letters cover the 
last half of the seventeenth century. Robinson, J. IL, Readings in European 
Histoiy, vol. ii, chap. xxxi. 

Secondary Works. For a comprehensive view of this period there is 
nothing superior to The Age of Louis XIV, 2 vols., and The Decline of the 
French Monarchy, 2 vols., — translations by Mary L. Booth of the correspond- 
ing parts of Henri Martin's Histoii-e de France. Wakeman, H. O., Europe, 
ijgS-f/ij, chaps, vi, vii, and ix-xv. Kitchin, G. W., A History of France, 
vol. iii. Hassall, A., The French People, chaps, xii-xiv ; and Louis XIV and 
the Zenith of the French Monajxhy. Perkins, J. B., France under Mazariti, 
vol. ii; France tinder the Regency; and France under Louis XV, 2 vols. Wil- 
liams, H. N., Madame de Pompadour. For the history of the French in 
America during the age of Louis XIV, the reader will have recourse to 
Parkman, F., Frontenac and N'ew France under Louis XIV. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The "Assiento": Moses, B., Establishment 
of the Spanish Rule in America, chap. xi. 2. France in America during the 
reign of Louis XIV: Fiske, J., A^ew England and New France, chap. iv. 
3. Life at court: Seignobos, C, History of Mediceval and Modern Civilization, 
PP- 351-356; Taine, H. A., The Ancient Regime (trans. J. Durand), pp. 86-122. 



CHAPTER XXVIII 

THE STUARTS AND THE ENGLISH REVOLUTION 

(1603-1689) 

I. THE FIRST TWO STUARTS 
Reign of James the First (1603-162 5) 

412. James' Idea of Kingship. With the end of the Tudor 
hne (sect. 355), James VI of Scotland, son of Mary Stuart, came 
to the EngHsh throne as James I of England. The accession of 
the House of Stuart brought England and Scotland under the 
same sovereign, though each country still retained its own 
legislature. 

James, like the other Stuarts who followed him on the English 
throne, was a firm believer in the doctrine of the divine right of 
kings. He held that hereditary princes are the Lord's anointed, 
and that their authority can in no way be questioned or limited 
by people, priest, or Parliament. These are his own words: "It 
is atheism and blasphemy to dispute what God can do: good 
Christians content themselves with His will revealed in His word; 
so it is presumption and high contempt in a subject to dispute 
what a king can do, or say that a king cannot do this or that."^ 

A strong support for this Stuart conception of the unlimited 
authority of kings was found in French theory and practice. The 
Stuarts were related to the French family of the Guises. They 
were in sympathy with French modes of thought. Further, 
Charles I had for wife a French princess, Henrietta Maria. These 
affiliations with France naturally brought the Stuarts under 
French influence. They imitated the Bourbons. They quoted 
them constantly, and strove to make the government of England- 
like that of France, an absolute monarchy. 

1 From the king's speech in the Star Chamber, 1616. 
370 



§413] KING JAMES AND THE COMMONS 371 

413. Contest between James and the Commons; "the 
Sovereign King and the Sovereign People." But the Com- 
mons of the English Parliament, and probably the majority of 
the English people, differed with their Stuart kings in their 
views concerning the nature of government, and particularly 
concerning the nature of the English government. In this differ- 
ence of views lay hidden, as we shall learn, the germs of the Civil 
War and of all that grew out of it, — the Commonwealth, the 
Protectorate, and the Revolution of 1688. 

An incident lights up vividly the situation. A committee from 
the Commons was about to wait upon the king. "Place twelve 
armchairs," said James to his attendants; "I am going to receive 
twelve kings." What the king said in bitter irony was the simple 
truth. James, when he met the committee from the Commons, 
met men who were as sure that they had a divine right to rule 
England as he was that he had a divine commission to that same 
end. As the historian Guizot tersely expresses it, " Both king and 
people thought as sovereigns." Here were the conditions of an 
irrepressible conflict. 

The chief matters of dispute between the king and the Com- 
mons were the limits of the authority of the former in matters 
touching legislation and taxation, and the nature and extent of 
the privileges and jurisdiction of the latter. 

As to the limits of the royal power, James talked and acted as 
though his prerogatives were practically unbounded. He issued 
proclamations which in their scope were really laws, and then 
enforced these royal edicts by lines and imprisonment as though 
they were regular statutes of Parliament. Moreover, taking ad- 
vantage of some uncertainty in the law as regards the power of 
the king to collect customs at the ports of the realm, he laid new 
and unusual duties upon imports and exports. James' judges were 
servile enough to sustain him in this course, some of them going 
so far as to say in effect that ''the seaports are the king's gates, 
which he may open and shut to whom he pleases." 

As to the privileges of the Commons, that body insisted, among 
other things, upon their right to determine all cases of contested 



372 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§414 

election of their members, and to debate freely all questions con- 
cerning the common weal, without being liable to prosecution or 
imprisonment for words spoken in the House. James denied that 
these privileges were matters of right pertaining to the Commons, 
and repeatedly intimated to them that it was only through his 
own gracious permission and the favor of his ancestors that they 
were allowed to exercise these liberties at all, and that if their 
conduct was not more circumspect and reverential he should take 
away their privileges entirely. 

On one occasion, the Commons having ventured in debate upon 
certain matters of state which the king had forbidden them to 
meddle with, he, in reproving them, made a more express denial 
than ever of their rights and privileges, which caused them, in a 
burst of noble indignation, to spread upon their journal a brave 
protest, known as "The Great Protestation," which declared that 
"the liberties, franchises, privileges, and jurisdictions of Parlia- 
ment are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of 
the subjects of England, and that the arduous and urgent affairs 
concerning the king, state, and defense of the realm and the 
Church of England . . . are proper subjects and matter of 
council and debate in Parliament" (162 1). 

When intelligence of this action was carried to the king, he 
angrily adjourned Parliament, sent for the journal of the House, 
and with his own hand struck out the obnoxious resolution. 
Then he dissolved Parliament, and even went so far as to imprison 
several of the members of the Commons. In these high-handed 
measures we get a glimpse of the Stuart theory of government, 
and see the way paved for the final break between king and 
people in the following reign. 

414. Colonies and Trade Settlements. The reign of James I 
is signalized by the commencement of that system of colonization 
which has resulted in the establishment of the English race in 
almost every quarter of the globe. In the year 1607 Jamestown, 
so named in honor of the king, was founded in Virginia. This 
was the first permanent English settlement within the limits of 
the United States. In 1620 some Separatists, or Pilgrims, who 



§415] LITERATURE UNDER KING JAMES I 373 

had found in Holland a temporary refuge from persecution, pushed 
across the Atlantic, and amidst heroic sufferings and unparalleled 
hardships established the first settlement in New England and laid 
the foundations of civil liberty in the New World. 

Besides planting these settlements in the New World, the Eng- 
lish during this same reign settled themselves in the ancient 
land of India. In 16 13 the East India Company established their 
first factory at Surat. This was the humble beginning of the great 
English Empire in the East. 

In this connection must also be noticed the Plantation of Ulster 
in Ireland. The northern part of that island having been desolated 
by a stubborn rebellion, and extensive tracts of land having 
been forfeited to the English crown, this land was now given 
by royal grant to English and Scotch settlers. Some of the 
Celtic clans were removed bodily and assigned lands in other 
parts of the island. This movement began in 1610. Its aim was 
to Protestantize and Anglicize the country. The end sought was 
in a good measure attained. In less than a century after the 
beginning of the colonization movement there were over a million 
Protestants of the Presbyterian sect settled in Ulster. The injus- 
tice and harshness of the treatment of the Irish natives awakened 
among them a spirit of bitter hostility to the newcomers, which, 
intensified by fresh wrongs, has embittered all the relations of 
Ireland and England up to our own day. 

415. Literature. One of the most noteworthy literary labors 
of the reign under review was a new translation of the Bible, 
known as King James' Version, published in 161 1. This version is 
the one in general use in the Protestant Church at the present day. 

The most noted writers of James' reign were a bequest to it 
from the brilliant era of Elizabeth.^ Sir Walter Raleigh, the 
petted courtier of Elizabeth, fell on evil days after her death. 
On the charge of taking part' in a conspiracy against the crown, 
he was sent to the Tower, where he was kept a prisoner for 

1 Shakespeare died about the middle of the reign (in 1616). Several of his com- 
panion dramatists, who like himself began their career under Elizabeth, also outlived 
the queen, and did most of their work during the reign of her successor. 



374 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§416 

thirteen years. From the tedium of his long confinement he found 
relief in the composition of a History of the World. He was at 
last beheaded (1618). 

The close of the life of the great philosopher Francis Bacon 
was scarcely less sad than that of Sir Walter Raleigh. He held 
the office of Lord Chancellor and, yielding to the temptations of 
the corrupt times upon which he had fallen, accepted fees from the 
suitors who brought cases before him. He was impeached and 
brought to the bar of the House of Lords, where he confessed his 
fault, but asserted that the money he took never influenced his 
judgment. He appealed pathetically to his judges '' to be merciful 
to a broken reed^" He was sentenced to pay a heavy fine and 
to imprisonment in the Tower. But the king in pity released him 
from all the penalty and even conferred a pension upon him. He 
lived only five years after his fall and disgrace, dying in 1626. 

Bacon must be given the first place among the philosophers of 
the English-speaking race. His system is known as the " Inductive 
Method of Philosophy." It insists upon experiment and a care- 
ful observation of facts as the only true means of arriving at a 
knowledge of the laws of nature. 

Reign of Charles the First (162 5-1 649) 

416. The Petition of Right (i628). Charles I came to the 
throne with all his father's lofty notions about the divine right of 
kings. He made his own these words of Scripture : " Where the 
word of a king is, there is power: and who may say unto him. 
What doest thou?"^ Consequently the old contest between king 
and Parliament was straightway renewed. The first two Parlia- 
ments of his reign Charles dissolved speedily, because instead of 
voting supplies they persisted in investigating public grievances; 

After the dissolution of his second Parliament, Charles endeav- 
ored to raise by means of benevolences (sect. 328) and forced 
loans the money he needed to carry on the government. But all 
his expedients failed to meet his needs, and he was forced to fall 

1 Eccles. viii. 4 ; cited by Charles on his trial in 1649. 



§417] CHARLES RULES WITHOUT PARLIAMENT 375 



back upon Parliament. The Houses met, and promised to grant 
him generous subsidies, provided he would approve a certain 
Petition of Right which they had drawn up. Next after Magna 
Carta, this document is the most important in the constitutional 
history of England. Four abuses were 
provided against: (i) the raising of 
money by loans, benevolences, taxes, 
etc., without the consent of Parlia- 
ment; (2) imprisonment without 
cause shown; (3) the quartering of 
soldiers in private houses, — a very 
vexatious thing; and (4) trial by 
martial law, that is, without jury. 

Charles was as reluctant to assent 
to the petition as King John had been 
to assent to Magna Carta, but he was 
at length forced to give sanction to 
it by the use of the usual formula, 
"Let it be law as desired" (1628). 

417. Charles rules without Parlia- 
ment ( 1629-1640). It soon became 
evident that Charles was utterly in- 
sincere when he gave his assent to 
the Petition of Right. He im- 
mediately violated its provisions in 
attempting to raise money by for- 
bidden taxes and loans. For eleven 
years he ruled without Parliament, 
thus changing the government of 
England from a government by king, Lords, and Commons to 
what was in effect an absolute and irresponsible monarchy, like 
that of France or of Spain. 

Prominent among Charles' most active agents were his min- 
isters, Thomas Wentworth, later Earl of Strafford, and William 
Laud, Bishop of London and later Archbishop of Canterbury, 
both of whom earned unenviable reputations through their 




Fig. 75. Charles I. (After 
a painting by Va/ufyke) 



376 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§418 

industry and success in building up the absolute power of their 
master upon the ruins of the ancient institutions of English liberty. 

The high-handed and tyrannical proceedings of Charles and his 
agents were enforced by three iniquitous courts of usurped and 
arbitrary jurisdiction. These were known as the "Council of the 
North," the " Star Chamber," and the " High Commission Court." ^ 
All these courts sat without jury and, being composed of the 
creatures of the king, were of course his subservient instruments. 
Often their decisions were unjust and arbitrary, their punishments 
harsh and cruel. 

418. John Hampden and Ship Money (i637-i638). Among 
the illegal taxes levied during this period of tyranny was a species 
known as "ship money," so called from the fact that in early 
times the kings, when the realm was in danger, called upon the 
seaports and maritime counties to contribute ships and ship 
material for the public service. Charles and his agents, in look- 
ing this matter over, conceived the idea of extending this tax 
over the inland as well as the seaboard counties. 

Among those who refused to pay the tax was a country gentle- 
man named John Hampden. The case was tried in the Court of 
Exchequer, before all the twelve judges. All England watched the 
progress of the suit with the utmost solicitude. The question was 
argued by able counsel both on Hampden's side and on the side of 
the crown. Judgment was finally rendered in favor of the king, al- 
though live of the twelve judges stood for Hampden. The case 
was lost; but the people, who had been following the arguments, 
were fully persuaded that it went against Hampden simply for the 
reason that the judges stood in fear of the royal displeasure should 
they dare to decide the case adversely to the crown. 

The arbitrary and despotic character which the government 
had now assumed in both civil and religious matters, and the 

1 The first was a tribunal established by Henry VIII, and now employed by Went- 
worth as an instrument for enforcing the king's despotic authority in the turbulent 
northern counties of England. The Star Chamber was a court organized by Henry VII, 
which at this time dealt chiefly with criminal cases affecting the government, such as riot, 
libel, and conspiracy. The High Commission Court was a tribunal of forty-four commis- 
sioners, created in Elizabeth's reign to enforce the Acts of Supremacy and Uniformity. 



§419] 



THE BISHOPS' WAR 



377 



hopelessness of relief or protection from the courts, caused thou- 
sands to seek in the New World that freedom and security which 
was denied them in their own land. 

419. The Bishops' War (i639). England was ready to rise 
in open revolt against the unbearable tyranny. Events in Scot- 
land hastened the crisis. The king was attempting to impose the 
English liturgy (slightly modified) upon the Scotch Presbyterians. 




Fig. 76. Execution of the Earl of Strafford. (From a 
contemporary print) 

To the Scotch this seemed little short of a restoration of the 
"Popery" they had renounced. All classes, nobles and peasants 
alike, bound themselves by a solemn National Covenant — whence 
the term Covenanters — to resist to the very last every attempt 
to make innovations in their religion (1638). 

The king resolved to crush the movement by force. The 
Scotch accepted the challenge with all that ardor which religious 
enthusiasm never fails to inspire. Charles soon found that war 
could not be carried on without money, and was constrained to 



378 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§420 

summon Parliament in hopes of obtaining a vote of supplies. 
But instead of making the king a grant of money, the Commons 
first gave their attention to the matter of grievances, whereupon 
Charles dissolved the Parliament. The Scottish forces crossed 
the border, and the king, helpless, with an empty treasury and a 
seditious army, was forced again to summon the two Houses. 

420. The Long Parliament. Under this call met on Novem- 
ber 3, 1640, the Parliament which, from the circumstance of its 
sitting for twelve years and legally existing for nearly twenty, 
became known as the "Long Parliament." A small majority of 
the members of the Commons of this Parliament were stern and 
determined men, men who fully realized the danger in which the 
traditional liberties of Englishmen were set, and who were resolved 
to put a check to the despotic course of the king. 

Almost the first act of the Commons was the impeachment of 
Strafford, as the most prominent instrument of the king's tyranny 
and usurpation. He was finally condemned by a bill of attainder^ 
and sent to the block. 

To secure themselves against dissolution before their work was 
done, the Houses passed a bill which provided that they should 
not be adjourned or dissolved without their own consent. The 
three arbitrary courts of which we have spoken, the High Com- 
mission Court, the Council of the North, and the Star Chamber, 
were abolished. Finally, an act was passed declaring the illegality 
of ship money and annulling the judgment against John Hampden 
" as contrary to and against the laws and statutes of this realm." 

421. Charles' Attempt to seize the Five Members. An im- 
prudent act on the part of Charles now precipitated the nation 
into the gulf of civil war, towards which events had been so 
rapidly drifting. With the design of overawing the Commons, the 
king made a charge of treason against five of the leading members, 
among whom were Hampden and Pym, and sent officers to effect 
their arrest ; but the accused were not to be found. The next 
day Charles himself, accompanied by armed attendants, went to 
the House for the purpose of seizing the five members; but, 

1 See p. 308, n. i. Laud was executed in 1645. 



§422] THE TWO PARTIES 379 

having been forewarned of the king's intention, they had with- 
drawn from the hall. The king was not long in realizing the state 
of affairs, and with the observation, "I see the birds have flown," 
withdrew from the chamber. 

Charles had taken a fatal step. The nation could not forgive 
the insult offered to its representatives. All London rose in arms. 
The king, frightened by the storm which his rashness had raised, 
fled from the city to York. From the flight of Charles from London 
may be dated the beginning of the civil war (January 10, 1642). 

The Civil War ( 1^42-1 649) 

422. The Two Parties. The country was now divided into 
two great parties. Those that enlisted under the king's standard 
— on whose side rallied, for the most part, the nobility, the gen- 
try, and the clergy — were known as Royalists or Cavaliers; 
while those that gathered about the Parliamentary banner, the 
townsmen and the yeomanry, were called Parliamentarians or 
Roundheads, the latter term being applied to them because many 
of their number cropped their hair close to the head, simply for 
the reason that the Cavaliers affected long and flowing locks. 
The Cavaliers favored the Established Episcopal Church, while 
the Roundheads were Puritans. During the progress of the 
struggle the Presbyterians and Independents (later known as 
Congregationalists) became the leading factions in the Puritan 
party. 

423. Oliver Cromwell and his "Ironsides." The war had 
continued about three years ^ when there came into prominence 
among the officers of the Parliamentary forces a man of destiny, 
one of the great characters of history, — Oliver Cromwell. Dur- 
ing the early campaigns of the war, as colonel of a troop of 
cavalry, he had exhibited his rare genius as an organizer and 
disciplinarian. His regiment became famous under the name of 
"Cromwell's Ironsides." It was composed entirely of "men of 

^ The first skirmish of the war was at Edgehill (1642), but the most important en- 
gagement of these earlier years was the battle of Marston Moor (1644), in which the 
Royalists suffered a severe defeat. 



38o THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§424 

religion." Swearing, drinking, and the usual vices of the camp 
were unknown among them. They advanced to the charge with 
the singing of psalms. During all the war the regiment was never 
once beaten. 

424. The "Self-denying Ordinance" and the "New Model" 
(i645). The military operations of these earlier years of the 
war had revealed fatal defects in the Parliamentary army. One 
of these was that many of the officers were persons who had 
received their commissions because of their social rank. The 
leaders in the Commons got rid of these titled inefficients by 
means of a measure known as the '' Self-denying Ordinance," 
which required that members of either House holding commands 
in the army should resign within forty days. At the same time 
they created a new army of twenty-one thousand men, called the 
"New Model." Sir Thomas Fairfax was created commander-in- 
chief, and Cromwell was made lieutenant-general with command 
of the horse. ^ 

Religious opinions had not been made a test for admission to 
the new army; but as a matter of fact its officers were for the 
most part Independents, and in the course of time the army 
through their influence became such a body of religious enthusi- 
asts as the world had not seen since Godfrey led his crusaders to 
the rescue of the Holy Sepulcher. A great part of the men were 
fervent. God-fearing, psalm-singing Puritans. When not fighting, 
they studied the Bible, prayed, and sang hymns. 

425. The Battle of Naseby (i645). The temper of the "New 
Model" was soon tried in the battle of Naseby, the decisive 
engagement of the war. The Royalists were beaten and their 
cause was irretrievably lost. Charles escaped from the field and 
ultimately fled into Scotland, thinking that he might rely upon the 
loyalty of the Scots to the House of Stuart; but on his refusing 
to sign the Covenant and certain other articles, they gave him 
up to the English Parliament. 

1 Parliament by a special resolution had made an exception in favor of Cromwell, 
which allowed him to hold an army commission while still retaining his seat in the 
Commons. 



§426] 



"PRIDE'S PURGE" 



381 



426. "Pride's Purge" (i648). Now, there were many in the 
Parliament who were in favor of restoring the king to his throne 
on the basis of conditions which he himself had proposed, that is 
to say, without requiring from him any sufficient guaranties that 
he would in the future rule in accordance with the constitution 
and the laws of the land. The Independents, that is to say, Crom- 
well and the army, saw in this possibility the threatened loss of 




Fig. 77. Westminster Hall. (From a photograph) 

This ancient hall was the scene of the trial and condemnation of Charles I. It had pre- 
viously witnessed the condemnation to death of many celebrated persons, among whom 
were William Wallace, Sir Thomas More, and the Earl of Strafford 

all the fruits of victory, A high-handed measure was resolved 
upon, — the exclusion from the House of Commons of all those 
members who favored the restoration of Charles. 

Accordingly an officer by the name of Pride was stationed at 
the door of the hall to exclude or to arrest the members obnoxious 
to the army. One hundred and forty-three members were thus 
kept from their seats, and the Commons became reduced to about 
fifty representatives. This performance was appropriately called 
"Pride's Purge." "The minority had now become the majority." 
But that is not an approved way of creating a majority. 



382 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§427 

427. Trial and Execution of the King (January 30, 1649). 

The Commons thus "purged" of the king's friends now passed a 
resolution for the immediate trial of Charles for treason. A High 
Court of Justice, comprising one hundred and thirty-five members, 
was organized, before which Charles was summoned. Appearing 
before the court, he denied its authority to try him, consistently 
maintaining that no earthly tribunal could rightly question his 
acts. But the trial went on, and before the close of a week he was 
condemned to be executed "as a tyrant, traitor, murderer, and 
public enemy to the good people of this nation." 

In a few days the sentence was carried out. Charles bore him- 
self in the presence of death with great composure and dignity. 
On the scaffold he spoke these words, the sincerity of which can- 
not be doubted: "For the people truly I desire their liberty and 
freedom as much as anybody whatsoever; but I must tell you that 
their liberty and freedom consists in having government; ... it 
is not in their having a share in the government; that is nothing 
pertaining to them." 

II. THE COMMONWEALTH AND THE PROTECTORATE 

(1649-1660) 

428. Establishment of the Commonwealth. A few weeks 
after the execution of Charles the Commons voted to abolish the 
office of king as "unnecessary, burdensome, and dangerous to the 
liberty, safety, and public interest of the people," and also to do 
away with the House of Lords as likewise "useless and dan- 
gerous to the people of England," and to establish a free state 
under the name of "The Commonwealth." A new Great Seal 
was made with this legend and date: "In the first year of free- 
dom, by God's blessing restored, 1648."^ The executive power 
was lodged in a Council of State, composed of forty-one per- 
sons. Of this body the eminent patriot Sir Henry Vane was 
the leading member. 

1 According to the method of reckoning then in vogue, the year 164S did not end 
until March 24. 



§429] TROUBLES OF THE COMMONWEALTH 383 

429. Troubles of the Commonwealth. The republic thus born 
of mingled religious and political enthusiasm was beset with dan- 
gers from the very first. The execution of Charles had alarmed 
every sovereign in Europe. Russia, France, and the Dutch Re- 
public all refused to have any communication with the ambas- 
sadors of the Commonwealth. The Scots, who too late repented 
of having surrendered their sovereign into the hands of his 
enemies, now hastened to wipe out the stain of their disloyalty by 
proclaiming his son their king, with the title of Charles the 
Second. The Royalists in Ireland declared for the prince; while 
the Dutch began active preparations to assist him in regaining 
the throne of his unfortunate father. In England itself the 
Royalists were active and threatening. 

430. War with Ireland (1649-I652). The Commonwealth, 
like the ancient republic of Rome, seemed to gather strength 
and energy from the very multitude of surrounding dangers. 
Cromwell was made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland and sent into 
that country to crush the Royalist party there. With his "Iron- 
sides" he made quick and terrible work of the suppression of the 
Catholic Royalists. Having taken by storm the town of Drogheda, 
which had refused his summons to surrender, he massacred the 
entire garrison, consisting of three thousand men (1649). The 
capture of other towns was accompanied by massacres little less 
terrible. The following is his own account of the manner in which 
he dealt with the captured garrisons: "When they submitted, 
their officers were knocked on the head, and every tenth man of 
the soldiers killed, and the rest shipped for Barbadoes." Crom- 
well's savage cruelty in his dealings with the Irish is an indelible 
stain on his memory. 

The Catholic Royalists having been defeated, the best lands 
of the island were confiscated and granted to English and Scotch 
settlers. This method of securing Protestant ascendancy in the 
island is what English history designates as the "Cromwellian 
settlement," but which Irish resentment calls the "Curse of 
Cromwell." The religious ferocity of this Puritan settlement of 
Ireland fanned fiercely the flame of hatred which earlier wrongs 



384 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§431 

had kindled in the hearts of the Irish people against their English 
conquerors, — a flame which has not yet burned itself out/ 

431. War with Scotland (i65o-i65i). Cromwell was called 
out of Ireland by the Council to lead an army into Scotland. 
The terror of his name went before him, and the people fled as 
he approached. At Dunbar he met the Scottish army. Before 
the terrible onset of the fanatic Roundheads the Scots were scat- 
tered like chaff before the wind. Ten thousand were made pris- 
oners, and all the camp train and artillery were captured (1650). 

The following year, on the anniversary of the battle of Dunbar, 
Cromwell gained another great victory over the Scottish army at 
Worcester, and all Scotland was soon after forced to submit to the 
authority of the Commonwealth. Prince Charles, after many ad- 
venturous experiences, escaped across the Channel into Normandy. 

432. Cromwell ejects the Long Parliament (i653). The war 
in Scotland was followed by one with the Dutch. While this war 
was in progress Parliament came to an open quarrel with the 
army. Cromwell demanded of Parliament their dissolution and 
the calling of a new body. This they refused; whereupon, taking 
with him a body of soldiers, Cromwell went to the House, and 
after listening impatiently for a while to the debate, suddenly 
sprang to his feet and with bitter reproaches exclaimed: "I will 
put an end to your prating. Get you gone; give place to better 
men. You are no Parliament. The Lord has done with you." At 
a prearranged signal his soldiers rushed in. The hall was cleared. 
Picking up the speaker's mace, Cromwell contemptuously asked, 
"What shall be done with his bauble?" "Take it away," he 
ordered. Then the soldiers withdrew from the hall and the 
door was locked. 

In such summary manner the Long Parliament, or the "Rump 
Parliament," as it was called in derision after "Pride's Purge," 
was dissolved, after having sat for twelve years. So completely 

1 Between the years 1641 and 1652 over half a million inhabitants of the island were 
destroyed or banished ; Prendergast {CnnrnvcHian Settlement, p. 177) affirms that during 
these years and those immediately following five sixths of the population perished. 
" A man might travel," he says, " for twenty or thirty miles and not see a living creature." 



§ 433] ESTABLISHMENT OF THE PROTECTORATE 385 



had the body lost the confidence and respect of all parties that 
scarcely a murmur v/as heard against the illegal and arbitrary 
mode of its dissolution. 

433. The "Little Parliament" and the Establishment of 
the Protectorate (1653). Cromwell now called together a new 
Parliament, or more properly 
a convention, summoning, so 
far as he might, only re- 
ligious. God-fearing men. 
The ''Little Parliament," as 
sometimes called, consisted 
of one hundred and fifty-six 
members, mainly religious 
zealots, who spent much of 
their time in Scripture exe- 
gesis, prayer, and exhorta- 
tion. Among them was a 
London leather merchant, 
named Praise-God Barebone, 
who was especially given to 
these exercises. The name 
amused the people, and as 
the exhorter was a fair repre- 
sentative of a considerable 
section of the convention, 
they nicknamed it " Bare- 
bone's Parliament," by which 
designation it has passed 
into history. 

The "Little Parliament" sat only five months, and then, resign- 
ing all its authority into the hands of Cromwell, dissolved itself. 
A sort of constitution, called the "Instrument of Government," 
was now drawn up by a council of army officers and approved 
by Cromwell. This instrument, the first of written constitutions, 
provided for a Parliament consisting of a single House, a Council 
of State, and an executive or president serving for life and bearing 




Fig. 78. Oliver Cru.mwell. (After 
a portrait by Samuel Cooper) 

You have that in your countenance which I 

would fain call master. — Earl of Kent to King 

Lear in Shakespeare's King Lcat- 



386 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§434 

the title of "Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, 
Scotland, and Ireland." Under this instrument Cromwell became 
Lord Protector for life. 

434. The Protectorate (i653-i659). Cromwell's power was 
now almost unlimited. He was virtually a dictator, for he had 
the power of the army behind him. The Protector summoned, 
winnowed, and dissolved Parliament at pleasure. He could get 
together no body of men who could or would work smoothly with 
him. "The Lord judge between me and you," were his words of 
dismissal to his last unmanageable and obstinate Parliament. 

For five years Cromwell carried on the government practically 
alone. His rule was arbitrary but enlightened. He gave England 
the strongest government she had had since the days of Wolsey 
and of Elizabeth. His aim was "to make England great and to 
make her worthy of greatness." This worthiness he, zealous 
Puritan as he was, conceived could be acquired by England only 
as her affairs were conducted by godly men and in accord with 
the plain precepts of Scripture. 

Further, in Oliver's mind, the English nation could be God's 
own people and worthy of greatness only as England upheld the 
Protestant cause in Europe. It was this religious persuasion 
which led him to become the protector of Protestantism wherever 
imperiled. He interposed successfully in behalf of the Huguenots 
in France and secured for them a respite from harassment; he 
obliged the Duke of Savoy to cease his cruel persecution of the 
Vaudois and caused the Pope to be informed that if the Protes- 
tants continued to be molested anywhere — Cromwell laid the 
blame of everything done against Protestant interests at the door 
of the Papacy — the roar of English guns would speedily awaken 
the echoes of St. Angelo. 

435. Cromwell's Death. Notwithstanding Cromwell was a 
man of immovable resolution and iron spirit, still he felt sorely 
the burdens of his government, and was deeply troubled by the 
anxieties of his position. In the midst of apparent success he was 
painfully conscious of utter failure. He had wished to establish a 
constitutional government. Instead, he found himself a military 



§436] RICHARD CROMWELL 387 

usurper, whose title was simply the title of the sword. His govern- 
ment, we may believe, was as hateful to himself as to the great 
mass of the English people. With his constitution undermined by 
overwork and anxiety, fever attacked him, and with gloomy appre- 
hensions as to the terrible dangers into which England might drift 
after his hand had fallen from the helm of affairs, he lay down to 
die, passing away on the day which he had always called his 
"fortunate day," — the anniversary of his great victories of Dun- 
bar and Worcester (September 3, 1658). 

As when the great Napoleon lay dying at St. Helena the island 
was shaken by a fierce tempest, so now the elements seemed to 
be in sympathy with the restless soul of Cromwell. ''A storm 
which tore roofs from houses and leveled huge trees in every forest 
seemed a fitting prelude to the passing away of his mighty spirit." 
But the enemies of the Protector believed that the tempest was 
raised by the devil, who had come for Oliver's soul. 

.436. Richard Cromwell (i658-i659). With his dying breath 
Oliver Cromwell — so it was given out — had designated his son 
Richard as his successor in the office of the Protectorate. Richard 
was exactly the opposite of his father, — timid, irresolute, and 
irreligious. The control of affairs that had taxed to the utmost 
the genius and resources of the father was altogether too great 
an undertaking for the incapacity and inexperience of the son. 
No one was quicker to realize this than Richard himself, and after 
a rule of a few months, yielding to the pressure of the army, 
whose displeasure he had incurred, he resigned his office. 

437. The Restoration (1660). For some months after the fall 
of the Protectorate the country trembled on the verge of anarchy. 
The gloomy outlook into the future and the unsatisfactory experi- 
ment of the Commonwealth caused the great mass of the English 
people earnestly to desire the restoration of the monarchy, — in 
truth, the majority of the nation had never desired its abolition. 
Charles Stuart, towards whom the tide of returning loyalty was 
running, was now in Holland. General Monk, the commander of 
the army in Scotland and the representative of Scottish sentiment, 
marched south to London and assumed virtual control of affairs. 



388 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§ 438 

The Long Parliament, including the members ejected by Pride 
(sect. 426), now reassembled, and by resolution declared that 
"according to the ancient and fundamental laws of this kingdom 
the government is and ought to be by king, Lords, and Com- 
mons." An invitation was sent to Prince Charles to return to his 
people and take his place upon the throne of his ancestors. 

Amid the wildest demonstrations of joy Charles stepped ashore 
on the island from which he had been for nine years an exile. As 
he observed the extensive preparations made for his reception, and 
received from all parties the warmest congratulations, he remarked 
with pleasant satire, '^Surely it is my own fault that I have re- 
mained these years in exile from a country which is so glad to 
see me." 

438. Why the Puritan Revolution failed. The Puritan Revo- 
lution had failed. To assign the deeper causes of this failure, 
whether in circumstances or in the personal character of Cromwell 
or of other leaders of the movement, would be a difficult thing 
to do; but without much hesitation we may say that one of the 
near-lying causes of the failure was that the Puritans committed 
the fault — which has been declared to be almost always the fault 
of revolutionists — of going too fast and too far. At the outset the 
Revolution had for its aim simply the setting of reasonable 
restrictions upon the exercise of the royal authority. Very soon, 
however, the kingly office, the hereditary House of Lords, and 
the Episcopal Church had been abolished. Each of these extreme 
measures raised up many implacable enemies of the Revolution. 

Then again, Puritanism, in many things, had got far away from 
English good sense. The Puritan regulations respecting harmless 
amusements, the observance of the Sabbath, and a hundred other 
matters were extreme and absurd and well calculated to provoke the 
scoff of the godless. So while in some directions the Puritans were 
merely in advance of the mass of the English people, in others they 
had gone far aside from the path that England was treading or 
was ever going to tread. Hence Puritanism was bound to fail. 

But to leave the matter thus would be misleading. In a 
deeper sense Puritanism did not fail. ''What of heroism, what of 



§439] PURITAN LITERATURE 389 

eternal light," says Carlyle, " there be in a man and his life . . . 
remains forever a new divine portion of the sum of things." And 
so was it with Puritanism. What of heroism and of truth there 
was in it — and there was much of both — was added to the sum 
of English history. Much that is best and truest in the life of 
England to-day and of Greater England beyond the seas strikes 
its roots deep in the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. 

439. Puritan Literature; it lights up the Religious Side of 
the English Revolution. No epoch in history receives a fresher 
illustration from the study of its literature than that of the Puritan 
Revolution. To neglect this, and yet hope to gain a true concep- 
tion of that wonderful episode in the life of the English people 
by an examination of its outer events and incidents alone, would, 
as Green declares, be like trying to form an idea of the life and 
work of ancient Israel from Kings and Chronicles, without Psalms 
and Prophets. The true character of the English Revolution, 
especially upon its religious side, must be sought in the magnifi- 
cent epic of Milton and the unequaled allegory of Bunyan. 

Both of these great works, it is true, were written after the 
Restoration, but they were both inspired by that spirit which had 
struck down despotism and set up the Commonwealth. The 
epic was the work of a lonely, disappointed republican; the alle- 
gory, of a captive Puritan. 

Milton (1608-1674) stands as the grandest representative of 
Puritanism. After the death of Charles I he wrote a famous work 
in Latin entitled The Defense of the English People, in which he 
justified the execution of the king. His Areopagitica, or Speech 
jar the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing, written some years earlier, 
is an eloquent plea for freedom of opinion and of teaching. 

The Restoration forced Milton into retirement, and the last 
fourteen years of his life were passed apart from the world. It 
was during these years that, in loneliness and blindness, he com- 
posed the immortal poems Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. 
The former is the "Epic of Puritanism." All that was truest and 
grandest in the Puritan character found expression in the moral 
elevation and religious fervor of this the greatest of Christian epics. 



390 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§ 440 

John Bunyan (1628-1688) was a Puritan nonconformist. 
After the Restoration he was imprisoned for twelve years in Bed- 
ford jail, on account of nonconformity to the established worship. 
It was during this dreary confinement that he wrote his Pilgrim's 
Progress, the most admirable allegory in English literature. The 
habit of the Puritan, from constant study of the Bible, to employ 
in all forms of discourse its language and imagery, is best illus- 
trated in the pages of this remarkable work. Here, as nowhere 
else, we learn what realities to the Puritan were the Bible repre- 
sentations of sin, repentance, and atonement, of heaven and hell. 



III. THE RESTORED STUARTS 
Reign of Charles the Second (i 660-1 685) 

440. Punishment of the Regicides. The monarchy having 
been restored in the person of Charles II, Parliament extended a 
general pardon to all who had taken part in the late rebellion, 
except Sir Henry Vane and certain of the judges who had con- 
demned Charles to the block. Thirteen of these were executed 
with revolting cruelty, their hearts and bowels being cut out of 
their living bodies. Others of the regicides were condemned to 
imprisonment for life. Vane was finally executed. Death had 
already removed the other great leaders of the rebellion — Crom- 
well, Ireton, and Bradshaw — beyond the reach of Royalist hate; 
so vengeance was taken upon their bodies. These were dragged 
from their tombs in Westminster Abbey, hauled to Tyburn, and 
there on the anniversary of Charles' execution were hanged and 
afterwards beheaded (1661). 

441. The Conventicle and Five-Mile Acts. Early in the reign 
the services of the Anglican Church were restored by Parliament, 
and harsh laws were enacted against all nonconformists. The 
Conventicle Act (1664) made it a crime for five persons or more, 
"over and above those of the same household," to gather in any 
house or in any place for worship, unless the service was con- 
ducted according to the forms of the Church of England. 




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§442] THE COVENANTERS 391 

The Five-Mile Act (1665) forbade any nonconformist minister 
who refused to swear that it is unlawful to take arms against the 
king under any circumstances, and that he never would attempt 
to make any change in Church or State government, to approach, 
"unless only in passing upon the road," within five miles of any 
city, corporate town, or borough sending members to Parliament, 
or of any place where he had once ministered. 

442. The Covenanters. In Scotland the attempt to suppress 
conventicles and introduce Episcopacy was stoutly resisted by the 
Covenanters (sect. 419), who insisted on their right to worship 
God in their own way. They were therefore subjected to persecu- 
tions most cruel and unrelenting. They were hunted by English 
troopers over their native moors and among the wild recesses of 
their mountains, whither they secretly retired for prayer and wor- 
ship. The tales of the sufferings of the Scotch Covenanters at the 
hands of the English Protestants form a most harrowing chapter 
of the records of the ages of religious persecution. 

443. The Plague and the Great Fire. Early in the summer 
of 1665 London was swept by a woeful plague, the most terrible 
visitation the city had known since the Black Death in the Middle 
Ages (sect. 196). Within six months one hundred thousand of the 
population perished. 

The plague was followed the next year by a great fire, which 
destroyed over thirteen thousand houses, eighty-nine churches, 
and a vast number of public buildings. The disaster was a bless- 
ing in disguise. The burned districts were rebuilt in a more sub- 
stantial way, with broader streets and more airy residences, so 
that London became a more beautiful and healthful city than 
would have been possible without the fire.^ 

444. Charles' Intrigues with Louis XIV; "the Popish Plot" 
(i678). Charles inclined to the Roman Catholic worship, and 
wished to reestablish the Catholic Church, because he thought it 
more favorable than the Anglican to such a scheme of government 

1 One of the churches destroyed was St. Paul's Cathedral, which was rebuilt with 
great magnificence. Its designer was the eminent architect, Sir Christopher Wren, near 
whose tomb within the building is this inscription : Si t>iomtmentiim rcqtibis, circmnspice, 
" If you seek his monument, look around." 



392 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§ 445 

as he aimed to set up in England. To reach his end he entered 
into secret negotiations with Louis XIV of France. The 
excited state of the pubUc mind, caused by rumors of the king's 
intrigues, led to a serious delusion and panic. A report was 
started that the Catholics had planned for England a St. Bar- 
tholomew. Each day the rumors of the conspiracy grew more 
wild and exaggerated. Informers sprang up on every hand, each 

with a more terrifying story than 
-"^"^^-^ the preceding. One of these wit- 

nesses, Titus Oates by name, a most 
infamous person, gained an extraor- 
dinary notoriety in exposing the 
imaginary plot. Many Catholics, 
convicted solely on the testimony of 
perjured witnesses, became the un- 
fortunate victims of the delusion 
and fraud. 

445. The Habeas Corpus Act 
(i679). The year following the 
" Popish Plot " Parliament passed 
the celebrated Habeas Corpus Act. 
This statute was intended to render 
more effectual the ancient and 

_ „ TT .r valued writ of habeas corpus, which 

Fig. 79. Charles II. (After '■ ' 

the painting by S/r Peter Lely) ^^s designed to protect the personal 

liberty of Englishmen, but which 
the king's courts and sheriffs were rendering well-nigh useless 
through their evasions and shifts. The law, which is based on 
articles of Magna Carta, is so carefully and ingeniously drawn that 
it is almost impossible for its provisions to be evaded in any way. 
It gives every person almost absolute security against illegal deten- 
tion in prison, and is the strongest safeguard against the attempts 
of a despotic ruler upon the liberty of those who may have in- 
curred his displeasure. It has been the model of all laws of like 
import throughout the Anglo-Saxon world. 




§446] JAMES' ACCESSION 393 

Reign of James the Second (1685-16 88) 

446. James' Accession; his Despotic Course. Charles was 
followed by his brother James, whose rule was destined to be 
short and troubled/ Like all the other Stuarts, James held exalted 
notions of the divine right of kings to rule as they please, and at 
once set about carrying out these ideas in a most reckless man- 
ner. Notwithstanding he had given solemn assurances that he 
would uphold the Anglican Church, he straightway set about the 
reestablishment of the Roman Catholic worship. He arbitrarily 
prorogued and dissolved Parliament. The High Commission 
Court of Elizabeth, which had been abolished by Parliament, 
he practically restored in a new tribunal presided over by the 
infamous Jeffreys. 

The despotic course of the king raised up enemies on all 
sides. No party or sect, save the most zealous Catholics, stood by 
him. The Tory gentry were in favor of royalty indeed, but not 
of tyranny. Thinking to make friends of the Protestant dissenters, 
James issued a decree known as the Declaration of Indulgence, 
whereby he suspended all the laws against nonconformists. This 
edict all the clergy were ordered to read from their pulpits. 
Almost to a man they refused to do so. Seven bishops even dared 
to send the king a petition and remonstrance against his uncon- 
stitutional proceedings. 

The petitioners were thrust into the Tower, and soon afterward 
were brought to trial on the charge of "seditious libel." The 
nation was now thoroughly aroused, and the greatest excitement 
prevailed while the trial was progressing. Judges and jury were 
overawed by the popular demonstration, and the bishops were 
acquitted. 

447. The Revolution of 1688 and the Declaration of Rights. 
The crisis which it was easy to see was impending was hastened 

1 James was barely seated upon the throne before the Duke of Monmouth, an ille- 
gitimate son of Charles II, raised the standard of rebellion. Terrible vengeance was 
wreaked upon all in any way connected with the movement. The notorious Chief Jus- 
tice Jeffreys, in what were called the " Bloody Assizes," condemned to death 320 persons 
and sentenced 841 to transportation. Jeffreys conducted the so-called trials with in- 
credible brutality. See Colby's Selections from the Sotaxes of English History^ No. 81. 



394 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§ 447 

by the birth of a prince, as this cut off the hope of the nation 
that the crown upon James' death would descend to his Protes- 
tant daughter ]\Iary, now wife of William of Orange, Stadtholder 
of Holland. The most active of the king's enemies therefore 
resolved to bring about at once what they had been inclined to 
wait to have accomplished by his death. They sent an invitation 
to Prince William urging him to come over with such force as he 
could muster and take possession of the government, pledging 
him the united and hearty support of the English nation. William 
accepted the invitation and straightway began to gather his fleet 
and army for the enterprise. 

The moment the ships of the Prince touched the shores of the 
island, the army and people went over to him in a body. The king 
was absolutely deserted. Flight alone was left him. The queen 
with her infant child was secretly embarked for France, where the 
king soon after joined her. The last act of the king before leaving 
England was to disband the army and fling the Great Seal into 
the Thames.^ 

Almost the first act of the Prince was to issue a call for a con- 
vention to provide for the permanent settlement of the crown. 
This convention did not repeat the error of the Parliament that 
restored Charles II and give the crown to the Prince and Princess 
without proper safeguards and guaranties for the conduct of the 
government according to the ancient laws of the kingdom. They 
drew up the celebrated Declaration of Rights, which plainly 
rehearsed all the old rights and liberties of Englishmen; denied 
the right of the king to lay taxes or maintain an army without the 
consent of Parliament; and asserted that freedom of debate was 
the inviolable privilege of both the Lords and the Commons. 
William and Mary were required to accept this declaration and 
to agree to rule in accordance with its provisions, whereupon they 
were declared King and Queen of England. In such manner was 
effected what is known in history as "the Glorious Revolution 
of 1688." 

1 In F"rance the self-exiled monarch and his family were kindly received by Louis, 
who kept up for tliem the shadow of a court in one of the royal palaces near Paris. 



§448] THE REACTION FROM PURITANISM 395 

Literature of the Restoration 

448. The Reaction from Puritanism; Record of this Re- 
action in the Literature of the Period. The reigns of the 
restored Stuarts mark the most corrupt period in the Hfe of Eng- 
lish society. The low standard of morals and the general profli- 
gacy in manners, especially among the higher classes, are in part 
attributable to the demoralizing example of a shockingly licentious 
and shameless court, but in a larger measure, perhaps, should be 
viewed as the natural reaction from the over-stern, repellent 
Puritanism of the preceding period. The Puritans undoubtedly 
erred in their indiscriminate and wholesale denunciation of all 
forms of harmless amusement and innocent pleasure. They not 
only rebuked gaming, drinking, and profanity, and stopped bear 
baiting^ but they closed all the theaters, forbade the Maypole 
dances of the people, condemned as paganish the observance of 
Christmas, frowned upon sculpture as idolatrous and indecent, 
and considered any color or adornment in dress as utterly in- 
compatible with a proper sense of the seriousness of life. 

Now all this was laying too heavy a burden upon human nature. 
The revolt and reaction came, as come they must. Upon the 
Restoration society swung to the opposite extreme. In place of 
the solemn-visaged, psalm-singing Roundhead we have the gay 
roistering Cavalier. Faith gives place to infidelity, sobriety to 
drunkenness, purity to profligacy, economy to extravagance, Bible 
study, psalm singing, and exhorting to theatergoing, profanity, 
and carousing. 

The literature of the age is a perfect record of this revolt against 
the "sour severity" of Puritanism and a faithful reflection of the 
unblushing immorality of the times. The book most read and 
praised by Charles II and his court, and the one that best repre- 
sents the spirit of the victorious party, was the satirical poem of 
Hudibras by Samuel Butler. The object of the work was to sati- 
rize the cant and excesses of Puritanism, just as the Don Quixote 

1 Macaulay humorously insists that the Puritans opposed bear baiting not because it 
gave pain to the bear but because it gave pleasure to the spectator. 



396 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§449 

of Cervantes burlesques the extravagances and follies of chivalry. 
Butler, however, displays a spirit of vindictiveness and hatred 
towards the object of his wit of which we find no trace in the 
genial Spanish humorist. 

So immoral and indecent are the works of the writers for the 
stage of this period that these authors have acquired the desig- 
nation of " the corrupt dramatists." Holding a prominent place 
among them was the poet Dryden. 

IV. REIGN OF WILLIAM AND MARY (1689-1702) 

449. The Bill of Rights (December 16, 1689). The Revo- 
lution of 1 688 and the settlement of the crown upon William and 
Mary marks an epoch in the constitutional history of England. 
It settled forever the long dispute between king and Parliament, — 
and settled it in favor of the latter. The Bill of Rights, which 
was substantially the articles of the Declaration of Rights framed 
into a law, and which was one of the earliest acts of the first 
Parliament under William and Mary, in effect " transferred sov- 
ereignty from the king to the House of Commons." 

By shutting out James from the throne and bringing in William, 
and by the exclusion of Catholic heirs from the succession, it 
plainly announced that the kings of England derive their right 
and title to rule not from the accident of birth but from the will 
of the people, and that Parliament may depose any king and, 
excluding from the throne his heirs, settle the crown anew in 
another family. This uprooted quite thoroughly the doctrine that 
princes have a divine and inalienable right to the throne of their 
ancestors, and when once seated on that throne rule simply as the 
vicegerents of God, above all human censure and control. We 
shall hear constantly less and less in England of this theory of 
government which for so long a time overshadowed and threatened 
the freedom of the English people. 

The separate provisions of the bill, following closely the language 
of the Declaration, denied the dispensing power of the crown, — 
that is to say, the authority claimed by the Stuarts of annulling a 



§ 450] SETTLEMENT OF THE REVENUE 397 

law by a royal edict; forbade the king to usurp the functions of 
the courts of justice, to levy taxes, or to keep an army in time of 
peace without the consent of Parliament ; asserted the right of the 
people to petition for redress of grievances and freely to choose 
their representatives; reaffirmed, as one of the ancient privileges 
of both Houses, perfect freedom of debate; and demanded that 
Parliament should be frequently assembled. 

Mindful of Charles' attempt to reestablish the Catholic wor- 
ship, the framers of this same Bill of Rights further declared that 
all persons holding communion with the Church of Rome or 
uniting in marriage with a Catholic should be " forever incapable 
to possess, inherit, or enjoy the crown and government of the 
realm." Since the Revolution of 1688 no Catholic has worn the 
English crown. 

All these provisions now became inwrought into the English 
constitution and from this time forward were recognized as part 
of the fundamental law of the realm. 

450. Settlement of the Revenue. The articles of the Bill of 
Rights were made effectual by appropriate legislation. One thing 
which had made the Tudors and Stuarts so independent of Parlia- 
ment was the custom which prevailed of granting to each king, at 
the beginning of his reign, the ordinary revenue of the kingdom 
during his life. This income, with what could be raised by gifts, 
benevolences, monopolies, and similar expedients, had enabled 
despotically inclined sovereigns to administer the government, 
wage war, and engage in any wild enterprise just as individual 
caprice or ambition might dictate. All this was now changed. 
Parliament, instead of granting William the revenue for life, 
restricted the grant to a single year, and made it a penal offense 
for the officers of the treasury to pay out money otherwise than 
ordered by Parliament. 

We cannot overestimate the importance of this change in the 
English constitution. It is this control of the purse of the nation 
which has made the House of Commons — for all money bills 
must originate in the Lower House — the actual seat of govern- 
ment, constituting them the arbiters of peace and war. 



398 THE STUARTS AND THE REVOLUTION [§ 451 

451. James attempts to recover the Throne: Battle of the 
Boyne (i69o). The first years of William's reign were disturbed 
by the efforts of James to regain the throne which he had 
abandoned. In these attempts he was aided by Louis XIV and 
by the Jacobites/ the name given to the adherents of the exile 
king. The Irish gave William the most trouble, but in the decisive 
battle of the Boyne he gained a great victory over them. 

The results of the battle of the Boyne broke the spirit of the 
revolt, and soon all Ireland acknowledged the authority of William. 
The Protestant Irish, or Orangemen, as they are called, still keep 
fresh the memory of the great victory by the celebration, even in 
the cities of the New W^orld, of the anniversary of the event. 

452, Plans and Death of William. The motive which had 
most strongly urged William to respond to the invitation of the 
English revolutionists to assume the crown of England was his 
desire to turn the arms and resources of that country against 
the great champion of despotism and the dangerous neighbor of 
his own native country, Louis XIV of France. 

The conduct of Louis in lending aid to James in his attempt 
to regain his crown had so enraged the English that they were 
quite ready to support William in his wars against him, and so the 
English and Dutch sailors fought side by side against the common 
enemy in the war of the Palatinate (sect. 405) . A short time after 
the close of that war, broke out the War of the Spanish Succes- 
sion (sect. 406). In the midst of preparations for this war William 
was fatally hurt by being thrown from his horse (1702).- 

Selections from the Sources. In opposition to Fit.mer, Patriarcha (see 
Sources for Chapter XXVI), read Milton, The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates. 
Of the utmost importance for the period of the Civil War and the Common- 
wealth are The Letters and Speeches of Olii'er Cromwelf with elucidations by 
Thomas Carlyle (ed. by S. C. Lomas). For additional material, see Henderson, 
E. F., Side Lights on English History, pp. 33-214; Robinson, J. H., Readings 
in European History, vol. ii, chap, xxx ; and Kendall, E. K., Source-Book, 
chaps, xi-xv. 

1 From Jacoluis, Latin for "James." 

- Mary had preceded William, having died in 1694, and as they left no children, the 
crown descended to the Princess .\nne, Mary's sister, the wife of Prince George of 
Denmark. 



REFERENCES 399 

Secondary Works. Gardiner, S. R., Histofy of England (1603 -1642), 
10 vols. ; History of the Great Civil War, 4 vols. ; History of the Commonwealth 
and Protectorate, 4 vols. ; Oliver Cronnvell and The First Tivo Stuarts and the 
Puritan Revolution. (Dr. Gardiner made this period especially his own. His 
works are of the highest authority and value.) Macaulay, T. B., Ihe History 
of England fvm the Accession of James II; also his Essays on Milton and 
John "Hampden. Morley, J., Oliver Cromwell. Harri.son, F., Oliver Crom- 
well. Hale, E., The Fall of the Stuarts. Wakeman, H. O., The Church of the 
Puritans. Trevelyan, G. M., England under the Stuarts. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The character and traits of James I: Hen- 
derson, E. F., Side Lights on English History, pp. 33-42. 2. Trial and execution 
of Charles I : Henderson, E. F., Side Lights on English History, pp. 85-92. 
3. The Irish " Cromwellian Settlement" : Prendergast, J. P., Cromwellian Settle- 
ment of Ireland. 4. Did Cromwell desire to be king: Lee, G. C, Source-Book 
of English History, pp. 389-392. 



CHAPTER XXIX 

THE RISE OF RUSSIA: PETER THE GREAT 

(1682-1725) 

453. General Remarks. We left Russia at the close of the 
Middle Ages a semi-savage, semi-Asiatic power, so hemmed in 
by barbarian bands and hostile races as to be almost entirely cut 
off from intercourse with the civilized world (sect. 240). In the 
present chapter we shall tell how her boundaries were pushed out 
to the sea on every side, — to the Caspian, to the Euxine, and to 
the Baltic, — and how she was initiated as a member of the 
European family of nations. The main interest of our story will 
gather about Peter the Great, whose almost superhuman strength 
and energy it was that first lifted the great barbarian nation to 
a prominent place among the Western states. 

454. Accession of Peter the Great (1682). The royal line 
established in Russia by the old Norseman Rurik (sect. 83) 
ended in 1598.^ Then followed a period of confusion and of 
foreign invasion, known as the Troublous Times, after which 
Michael Romanoff, the first of the celebrated family that bears 
his name, was chosen Tsar (1613). 

For more than half a century after the accession of the 
Romanoffs there is little either in the genius or in the deeds of 
any of the line calculated to draw our special attention. But 
towards the close of the seventeenth century there ascended the 
Russian throne "a man of miracles," — a man whose genius and 
energy and achievements instantly drew the gaze of his contem- 
poraries, and who has elicited the admiration and wonder of all 
succeeding generations. This was Peter I, known as Peter the 

1 The most noteworthy ruler of this line during the modern era was Ivan the Terri- 
ble (i|;3;;-i5S4'). He drove out the Tatars (sect. 159) and e.xtended and consolidated 
the Russian dominions. 

400 



§455] 



PETER'S CHARACTER 



401 



Great, one of the remarkable characters of history. He was but 
seventeen years of age when he assumed the full responsibilities 
of government. 

455. Peter's Character. And here, as Peter steps upon the 
stage to play his great part in the drama of history, we must 
notice what sort of man 
he was. Like Philip II 
of Spain, he was the 
true child of his race. 
In him all the forces of 
the Russian race life 
seem to have been con- 
centrated. He has been 
likened to the legendary 
heroes of the Russian 
and the Gothic race. 
He was a man of ele- 
mental forces and pas- 
sions. He had fits of 
Berserker rage, — wild 
frenzies during which 
the life of no one about 
him was safe. He in- 
dulged in astonishing 
drinking bouts and de- 
lighted in buffoonery 
and coarse jests. 

But over against 
Peter's vices were set 
many virtues. He worked strenuously at his kingly trade, not alone 
from sheer love of work but because work was to him a duty. He 
was not without truly royal thoughts, like those of the best of the 
Enlightened Despots, in regard to the nature of the kingly office. 
He is said to have uttered this sentiment : '' I am the first servant 
of my people." And this was not mere sentiment with him, as the 
following story witnesses. One day he visited a park which he 




Fig. 80. Peter the Great. (After a 
painting by Karel de Moor) 



402 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§ 456 

had made, and was surprised to find no one in it. "Do the people 
suppose," he inquired, "that I have set so many hands at work 
and spent so much money simply for my own benefit?" And 
then he ordered proclamation to be made that the park belonged 
to the people and that they were to use it as their own. 

456. The State of Russia when Peter assumed the Govern- 
ment. In order to understand what Peter did for Russia we must 
acquaint ourselves with the condition of the country when he 
took into his hands the shaping of its destinies. 

In the first place, we should note the geographical isolation of 
Russia. At this time she possessed only one seaport, Archangel, 
on the White Sea, which harbor for a large part of the year is 
sealed against vessels by the extreme cold of that high latitude. 
The Tatars and Turks cut her off from the Black Sea ; the terri- 
tories of the Swedes and the Poles intervened between her and 
the Baltic. She looked towards Asia, to which continent she in 
fact belonged. When in 1648 the European states readjusted their 
affairs in the great Westphalian peace, Russia had no lot or part 
in the convention, not simply because she had stood aloof from 
the Thirty Years' War but also because she v/as not then regarded 
as forming a part of Europe. 

In the second place, we should recall how Russia had been 
actually Asiaticized through her long subjection to the Mongol 
hordes (sect. 159). That tide of conquest, it is true, had now 
ebbed. But "the flood receding from the soil had left behind 
it, like a heavy deposit, all its stable elements, — forms of govern- 
ment, customs, and habits of thought." The Russia which had 
emerged was essentially Asiatic and barbarous. 

457. Peter's Task. Peter's task was to break Russia's isolation 
and to undo the work of the Tatar conquerors, — to make again 
European what they had made Asiatic. Hence one essential part 
of Peter's programme was to wrest the Euxine from the hands of 
the Turks and the eastern shores of the Baltic from the grasp 
of the Swedes. Thus would he gain for Russia her first great 
need, — access to the sea. Thus would he break that isolation 
which had done so much to keep the country in the rear of the 
nations of western Europe in the march of progress. 



§ 458] CONQUEST OF AZOV 403 

Another essential article of Peter's policy was the introduction 
into Russia of the ideas, customs, arts, and industries of western 
Europe, — in a word, to make Russia in her thoughts, ideals, and 
institutions a member of the European family of nations. 

458. The Conquest of Azov (i696). In 1695 Peter sailed 
down the Don and made an attack upon Azov, the key to the 
Black Sea, but was unsuccessful. The next year, however, repeat- 
ing the attempt, he succeeded, and thus gained his first harbor 
on the south. 

No sooner had Peter secured his new harbor than he set in 
earnest about the construction of a marine fleet, in which enter- 
prise he was aided by shipwrights whom he had called from 
Venice and other Western states. So energetically was the work 
pushed that in less than two years a great fleet of warships was 
floating upon the streams running to the Sea of Azov. 

459. Peter's First Visit to the West' (i697-i698). With a 
view to advancing his naval projects, Peter about this time sent 
a large number of young Russian nobles to Italy, Holland, and 
England to acquire in those countries a knowledge of naval affairs, 
forbidding them to return before they had become good sailors. 

Not satisfied with thus sending to foreign parts his young nobil- 
ity, Peter formed the somewhat startling resolution of going abroad 
himself and learning the art of shipbuilding by personal experience 
in the dockyards of Holland. Accordingly, in the year 1697, 
leaving the government in the hands of three nobles, he set out 
for the Netherlands. 

Peter, with his uncouth barbarian suite, made a great sensation 
as he traveled westward. His passage with his court was like the 
passage of a horde of untamed Cossacks. Peter himself often acted 
like a savage and made his entertainers no end of trouble and 
anxiety. At Konigsberg he asked to see a man broken on the 
wheel. The authorities explained to him that they were unable 
to gratify his wish, since there was no criminal at hand condemned 
to undergo that form of punishment. Peter was astonished that 
that should stand in the way of his seeing how the instrument 
worked. "What a fuss about killing a man! " he said. 

1 Peter made a second European tour in 1716-1717. 



404 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§459 

The palaces in which Peter and his company were lodged were 
left in a condition that could hardly have been worse had they 
been subjected to a regular siege. Prudent hosts removed every- 
thing breakable from the apartments designed for the accommo- 
dation of the "barbarian court." ^ 

Upon reaching the Netherlands Peter proceeded to Zaandam, 
a place a short distance from Amsterdam. After a week's stay 
here, in order to escape the annoyance of the crowds, Peter left 
the place and went to the docks of the East India Company at 
Amsterdam, who set about building a frigate that he might see 
the whole process of constructing a vessel from the beginning. 
Here he worked for four months, being known among his fellow- 
workmen as Baas or Master Peter. 

It was not alone the art of naval architecture in which Peter 
interested himself; he attended lectures on anatomy, studied sur- 
gery, gained some skill in pulling teeth and in bleeding, inspected 
paper mills, flour mills, printing presses, and factories, and visited 
cabinets, hospitals, and museums, thus acquainting himself with 
every industry and art that he thought might be advantageously 
introduced into his own country. 

From Holland Master Peter went to England to study her 
superior naval establishment and to learn "the why" and "the 
wherefore." Here he was fittingly received by King William HI, 
who had presented Peter while in Holland with a splendid yacht 

1 Wilhelmina, the sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia, who saw Peter and his 
company at Berlin when the Tsar was on his second visit to the West some years after 
this, gives in her Memoirs the following amusing account of what happened at the 
summer palace, near the capital, where Peter and his suite were lodged. Recounting 
the prudent measures taken by the queen to minimize the inevitable damage, she writes : 
" In order to prevent the mischief which the Russian gentlemen had done in other 
places where they had lodged, the queen ordered the principal furniture, and whatever 
was most brittle, to be removed." And this is what she has to say of the condition of 
the palace after the Russian guests had left it : " What desolation was there visible ! I 
never beheld anything like it ; indeed, I think Jerusalem after its siege and capture 
could not have presented such another scene. This elegant palace was left by them in 
so ruinous a state that the queen was absolutely obliged to rebuild the whole of it." 
A similar story comes from England. The English government lodged Peter and his 
court in the fine residence of the celebrated writer John Evelyn. The owner of the 
premises felt constrained to ask the government to pay for the injury they had sustained. 
The damages were carefully assessed and amounted to £^'^0 9s. 6d. 



§ 460] PETER CREATES A NEW ARMY 405 

fully equipped, and who now made his guest extremely happy by 
getting up for him a naval review. Returning from England to 
Holland, Peter went thence to Vienna, intending to visit Venice; 
but hearing of an insurrection at home, incited by dislike of his 
reforms, he set out in haste for Moscow. 

460. Peter disbands the Streltsi and creates a New Army 
after Western Models. The revolt which had hastened Peter's 
return from the West was an uprising among the Streltsi, a body 
of militia, numbering twenty or thirty thousand, who formed the 
nearest thing to a standing Russian army. In their ungovernable 
turbulence they remind us of the Pretorians of the Roman em- 
perors or the Janizaries of the later Turkish sultans. The present 
mutiny had been suppressed before Peter's arrival, so that there 
was nothing now remaining for him to do save to mete out punish- 
ment to the ringleaders, of whom a thousand or more were put 
to death with the crudest tortures. Peter beheaded some of the 
wretches with his own hands, and compelled the nobles of his 
court also to help strike off the heads of the condemned. Nothing 
better illustrates the barbarism of the Russia of Peter's time than 
the fact that his acting thus as an executioner never shocked his 
subjects in the least. 

This revolt settled Peter in his determination to rid himself 
altogether of the insolent and turbulent Streltsi. Their place was 
taken by a well-disciplined force trained according to the tactics 
of the Western nations. 

461. Peter's Other Reforms. The reorganization of the Rus- 
sian military system was only one of the many reforms undertaken 
by Peter. The variety of these was so great, and Peter's manner 
of effecting them so harsh and strenuous, that, as one has aptly 
expressed it, he fairly "knouted the Russians into civilization." 

As outgrowths of what he had seen or heard or had had sug- 
gested to him on his foreign tour, Peter issued a new coinage, 
introduced schools, built factories, constructed roads and canals, 
established a postal system, opened mines, framed laws modeled 
after those of the West, reformed the Russian calendar, and 
changed the government of the towns in such a way as to give 



4o6 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§462 

the citizens a voice in the management of their local affairs, as 
he had observed was done in the Netherlands and in England. 

Most important in its political as well as religious consequences 
was Peter's reform in the ecclesiastical system. At this time the 
Russian Church formed a sort of state within the state. The head 
of the Church, bearing the title of Patriarch, was a kind of Rus- 
sian pope. Through his censorship of the temporal authority and 
his interference in matters secular, he hampered and embarrassed 
the government. Peter put an end to this state of things. He 
abolished the patriarchate, and in its place created an adminis- 
trative body, appointed by himself and called the Holy Synod, to 
take charge of ecclesiastical affairs. Thus the last restraint upon 
the authority of the Tsar was destroyed. 

462. Charles XII of Sweden; the Swedish Monarchy at his 
Accession. Peter's history now becomes intertwined with that of 
a man quite as remarkable as himself, — Charles XII of Sweden. 
Charles was but fifteen years of age when, in 1697, the death of 
his father called him to the Swedish throne.^ 

Sweden was at this time one of the great powers of Europe. 
The basis of her greatness had been laid during the period of 
the Reformation. The traditions of the hero Gustavus Adolphus 
cast a halo about the Swedish throne. The ideal of this great 
sovereign had been the creation of a state embracing all the lands 
bordering upon the Baltic. In a certain measure this magnificent 
ideal had been realized. The Baltic was virtually a Swedish 
lake, — the Mediterranean of an empire which aspired to be the 
mistress of the North. 

But unfortunately Sweden could not maintain such a sea empire 
without hemming in and cramping in their normal development, 
territorial or commercial, various neighboring states, — in particu- 
lar, Russia, Poland, and Denmark. In this situation lay hidden 
the germ of the long and obstinate so-named Swedish Wars, which 
were essentially a struggle for the control of the Baltic. 

1 The government of Sweden had now become an absolute autocracy. In 1693 
the Riksdag, or Diet, had proclaimed the Swedish monarch to be an " all-commanding 
sovereign-king responsible for his actions to none on earth, but with authority as a 
Christian king to rule as it seemeth to him best." 



§463] THE BATTLE OF NARVA 407 

The accession to the throne of the young and inexperienced 
Charles offered to the jealous enemies and watchful rivals of 
Sweden seemingly too good an opportunity to be lost for pushing 
her back into the northern peninsula. Accordingly three sover- 
eigns, Frederick IV of Denmark, Augustus the Strong, Elector of 
Saxony and King of Poland, and Peter the Great of Russia, 
leagued against him for the purpose of appropriating such por- 
tions of his dominions as they severally coveted. 

463. The Battle of Narva (1700). But the conspirators had 
formed a wrong estimate of the young Swedish monarch. Not-' 
withstanding the insane follies in which he was accustomed to 
indulge, he possessed talent; especially had he a remarkable 
aptitude for military affairs, though lacking many of the qualities 
of a great commander. 

With a well-trained force — a veteran army that had not yet 
forgotten the discipline of the hero Gustavus Adolphus — Charles 
now threw himself first upon the Danes,, and in two weeks forced 
the Danish king to sue for peace; then he turned his little army 
of eight thousand men upon the Russian forces of twenty thou- 
sand, which were besieging the city of Narva, on the Gulf of 
Finland, and inflicted upon them a most ignominious defeat. 

464. The Founding of St. Petersburg (1703). After chastis- 
ing the Tsar at Narva the Swedish king turned south and marched 
into Poland to punish Augustus for the part he had taken in the 
conspiracy against him. While Charles was busied in this quarter, 
Peter, having made good by strenuous exertions his loss in men 
and arms at Narva, was gradually making himself master of the 
Swedish lands on the Baltic, and upon a marshy island at the 
mouth of the Neva was laying the foundations of the city of 
St. Petersburg (now Petrograd), which he proposed to make the 
western gateway of his empire. 

The spot selected by Peter as the site of his new capital was 
low and subject to inundation,^ so that the labor requisite to 
make it fit for building purposes was simply enormous. But 

1 In selecting such a marshy site for his capital Peter may have been aiming to repro- 
duce Amsterdam, in which city he had spent so much of his time when abroad. 



4o8 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§465 

difficulties never dismayed Peter. He gathered workmen from 
all parts of his dominions, cut down and dragged to the spot 
whole forests for piles and buildings, and caused a city to rise 
as if by magic from the morasses. The splendid capital stands 
to-day one of the most impressive monuments of the indomitable 
and despotic energy of Peter. 

465. Invasion of Russia by Charles XII; the Battle of 
Poltava (i709). Having defeated the armies of King Augustus 
and given his crown to another, Charles was now ready to turn 
his attention once more to the Tsar. With an army of barely 
forty thousand men he invaded Russia, and finally laid siege to the 
town of Poltava. Peter marched to its relief, and the two armies 
met in decisive combat in front of the place. The Swedish army 
was virtually annihilated. Escaping from the field with a few 
followers, Charles fled southward and found an asylum in Turkey.^ 

466. Russia's Title to Baltic Land confirmed; Peter's Death 
and Work. In 1721 the Swedish Wars which had so long dis- 
turbed Europe were brought to an end by the Peace of Nystad, 
which confirmed Russia's title to all the eastern Baltic lands that 
Peter had wrested from the Swedes. The undisputed possession 
of so large a strip of the Baltic seaboard vastly increased the im- 
portance and influence of Russia, which now assumed a place 
among the leading European powers. 

Peter's eventful reign was now drawing to a close. Four years 
after the end of the Swedish Wars, being then in his fifty-fourth 
year, he died of a fever brought on by his excesses and care- 
less exposures. It was characteristic of his lack of prudence and 
foresight that he left no will nor any directions regarding the 
succession to the throne. 

Probably in the case of no other European nation has any single 
personality left so deep and abiding an impress upon the national 

1 After spending five years among the Turks, during which time he acted in a 
manner which abundantly justified liis title of the " Madman of the North," Charles 
returned to Sweden. Soon after his return he was killed in battle. At the time of his 
death Charles was only thirty-six years of age. Perhaps we can understand him best by 
regarding him, as his biographer VolUtire suggests, as an old Norse sea king born ten 
centuries after his time. He was, indeed, " the last of the Vikings." 



§ 467] REIGN OF CATHERINE THE GREAT 



409 



life and history as Peter the Great left upon Russian society and 
Russian history. He planted throughout his vast empire the 
seeds of Western civilization, and by his giant strength lifted the 
great nation which destiny had placed in his hands out of 
Asiatic barbarism into the society of the European peoples. 

467. Reign of Catherine the Great (i762-i796); the Parti- 
tion of Poland. From the death of Peter on to the close of 
the eighteenth cen- 
tury the throne of 
Russia was held, for 
the greater part of 
the time, by women, 
most noted of whom 
was Catherine II, the 
Great, who was one of 
the most noted repre- 
sentatives of the En- 
lightened Despots of 
this period (sect. 396). 
But while a woman 
of great genius she had 
most serious faults of 
character, being un- 
scrupulous and in- 
credibly profligate. 

Carrying out ably 
the policy of Peter the 

Great, Catherine extended vastly the limits of Russian dominion 
and opened the country even more thoroughly than he had done 
to the entrance of Western influences. She was a genuine admirer 
of the French philosophers and was at pains to disseminate their 
teachings in her dominions. Aside from internal reforms, the most 
noteworthy matters of Catherine's reign were her conquest of the 
Crimea and her participation in the dismemberment of Poland. 

It was in the year 1783 that Catherine effected the subjugation 
and annexation to Russia of the Crimea. The possession of this 




Fig. 81. Catherine II of Russia. (After a 
portrait by Rosselin) 



410 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§ 467 

peninsula gave Russia a foothold on the Black Sea, which once 
virtually secured by Peter the Great had been again lost through 
his misfortunes. This extension of the rule of the Muscovite to 
the Euxine was a matter of great moment to all eastern Europe; 
for now, as Freeman says, "the road through which so many 
Turanian invaders had pressed into the Aryan continent was 
blocked forever." 

On the west Catherine succeeded, by intrigue and the most 
shameful disregard of the law of nations, in greatly extending the 
limits of her dominions. This she effected at the expense of 
Poland, the partition of which state she planned in connection 
with Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria. 
On the first division, which was made in 1772, the royal robbers 
each took a portion of the spoils. This act of brigandage was con- 
summated in spite of the efforts of patriotic Poles for reform, the 
anarchical condition of the Polish state being the pretext of the 
despoiling sovereigns for their action.^ 

It is difficult to apportion rightly the blame among the partici- 
pants in this transaction. Maria Theresa seems to have been the 
only one connected with the iniquitous business who had any 
scruples of conscience respecting the act. She justly characterized 
the proposed partition as downright robbery, for a long time stood 
out against it, and yielded at last and took her portion only when 
she realized that she was powerless to prevent the others from 
carrying out the policy of dismemberment. 

In 1793 a second partition was made, this time between 
Russia and Prussia; and then, in 1795, after the suppression 

1 The Polish constitution was a survival of the age of mediaeval feudal anarchy. In 
the struggle here between the royal power and the feudal nobility the aristocracy had 
triumphed and had reduced the kingly authority to the mere shadow of elective king- 
ship. One particular source of the anarchical state of things was a provision of the con- 
stitution which gave to every single member of the Diet the right and power to defeat 
any measure by his vote cast in opposition {libcrimi veto). Every noble was virtually a 
king. But it must be added that this anarchical state of the kingdom cannot be pleaded 
by the dismemberers of Poland in extenuation of their crime, for they in every possible 
way hampered all schemes of reform and fostered the anarchy because it ser\'ed their 
interests and furthered their plans to do so. Further, an admirable new constitution was 
drawn up for Poland in 1791, which might have made it a strong state had a chance 
been allowed. 



§468] REFERENCES 411 

of a determined revolt of the Poles under the lead of the patriot 
Kosciuszko, a third and final division among the three powers 
completed the dismemberment of the unhappy state and erased 
its name from the map of Europe. 

The territory gained by Russia in the dismemberment of Poland 
brought her western frontier close alongside the civilization of 
central Europe. In Catherine's phrase Poland had become her 
"doormat," upon which she stepped when visiting the West. 

By the close of Catherine's reign Russia was beyond question 
one of the foremost powers of Europe and was henceforward to 
have a voice in all matters of general European concern. 

Selections from the Sources. Robinson, J. H., K^adiu^^s in Emvpeaii His- 
loiy, vol. ii, pp. 301-312. 

Secondary Works. Rambaud, A., History of Russia, 3 vols. Schuyler, E., 
Peter the Great, Emperor of Russia (the best biography of the great Tsar). For 
a shorter, delightfully written life, see Motley, J., Peter the Great. Morfill, 
W. R., Story of Russia, chaps, v-ix, and Stoiy of Poland, chap, xi (the last for 
the Partition of Poland). Bain, R. N., Charles XII. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Why the battle of Poltava (Pultowa) is given 
a place among the decisive battles of history : Creasy, E. G., Decisive Battles 
of the World, chap. xii. 2. The founding of St. Petersburg: Rambaud, A., 
History of Russia, vol. ii, pp. 101-105. 3. Introduction of Western civilization 
into Russia : Seignobos, C, History of Conteinporajy Civilization, pp. 17-28. 



CHAPTER XXX 

THE RISE OF PRUSSIA : FREDERICK THE GREAT 

(1740-1786) 

468. The Beginnings of Prussia. The nucleus of the Prussian 
kingdom was a little state in the north of Germany known as 
the Mark or Electorate of Brandenburg. Early in the fifteenth 
century it had come under the rule of the Hohenzollerns, a family 
destined to play a great part in later European history. Soon 
after the opening of the seventeenth century the importance of 
the state was greatly increased by the union with it of the Duchy 
of Prussia, a strong military state, under Polish suzerainty, on 
the Baltic shore. - 

469. The Great Elector Frederick William (i64o-i688). 
Just before the close of the Thirty Years' War a strong man — 
Frederick William, better known as the "Great Elector" — came 
to the throne of the dual state. At the Peace of Westphalia he 
secured new territory, which greatly enhanced his power and 
prominence among the German princes. 

The Great Elector ruled for nearly half a century and left to 
his successor a strongly centralized authority. He was one of the 
most ideal representatives of the principle of absolute monarchy 
then so dominant. Like all absolute rulers, he placed his faith 
in soldiers and laid the basis of the military power of Prussia 
by the creation of a standing army. 

470. How the Elector of Brandenburg acquired the Title 
of King of Prussia. Elector Frederick III (1688-1713), son of 
the Great Elector, was ambitious for the title of King, a dignity 
that the weight and influence won for the Prussian state by his 

1 For the early history of this state see sect. 1 3S. Since 1525 the duchy had been an 
hereditary possession of a branch of the House of Hohenzollern. 

412 



§ 471] FREDERICK WILLIAM I 413 

father fairly justified him in seeking. He saw about him other 
princes less powerful than himself enjoying this dignity, and he 
too ''would be a king and wear a crown." 

It was necessary of course for Frederick to secure the consent 
of the Emperor, a matter of some difficulty, for the Catholic 
advisers of the Austrian court were bitterly opposed to having a 
Protestant prince thus honored and advanced. But the War of tTie 
Spanish Succession was just about to open, and the Emperor was 
extremely anxious to secure Frederick's assistance in the coming 
struggle. Therefore, on condition of his furnishing him aid in the 
war, the Emperor consented to Frederick's assuming the new title 
and dignity in the Duchy of Prussia, which, unlike Brandenburg, 
was not included in the Empire. Accordingly, early in the year 
1 701, Frederick, amidst imposing ceremonies, was crowned and 
hailed as King at Kbnigsberg. Hitherto he had been Elector of 
Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia; now he was Elector of Bran- 
denburg and King 0} Prussia. 

Thus was a new king born among the kings of Europe. Thus 
did the House of Hapsburg invest with royal dignity the rival 
House of Hohenzollern. The event is a landmark in German, 
and even in European, history. The cue of German history from 
this on is the growth of the power of the Prussian kings and their 
steady advance to imperial honors and to the control of the 
affairs of the German race. 

471. Frederick William I (1713-1740). The son and suc- 
cessor of the first Prussian king, known as Frederick William I, 
was a most extraordinary character. He was a strong, violent, 
brutal man, full of the strangest freaks. He had a mania for big 
soldiers. With infinite expense and trouble he gathered a regi- 
ment of the tallest men he could find, who were known as the 
"Potsdam Giants." Not only were the Goliaths of his own 
dominions impressed into the service, but tall men in all parts of 
Europe were coaxed and hired to join the regiment. No present 
was so acceptable to Frederick William as a tall grenadier. On 
the other hand, nothing angered him more than any interference 
with his recruiting service. To the Dutch, who had hanged two 



414 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§472 

of his recruiting sergeants and then later wanted from Prussia 
a famous scholar for one of their universities, he is said to have 
replied curtly, "No tall fellows, no professor." 

Rough, brutal tyrant though he was, Frederick William was an 
able ruler. He did much to consolidate the power of Prussia, 
and at his death left to his successor a considerably extended 
dominion and a splendidly drilled army of eighty thousand men. 
He was, as Carlyle calls him, the first great drillmaster of the 
Prussian nation. 

472. Accession of Frederick the Great (i74o) ; his Youth. 
Frederick William was followed by his son Frederick II, known 
in history as Frederick the Great. Around his name gather events 
of world-wide interest for forty-six years just preceding the 
French Revolution. 

It was a rough nurture Frederick had received in the home of 
his brutal father. His sister Wilhelmina tells incredible tales of 
her own and her brother's treatment at the hands of their savage 
parent. He made the palace a veritable hell for them both. He 
threw plates from the table at their heads and kept them in con- 
stant fear for their lives. Frederick's fine tastes for music and art 
and reading exposed him in particular, to use the words of Wil- 
helmina, to his royal father's "customary endearments with his 
fist and cane." 

Frederick had a genius for war, and his father had prepared to 
his hand one of the most efficient instruments of that art since 
the time of the Roman legions The two great wars in which 
Frederick was engaged, and which raised Prussia to the first 
rank among the military powers of Europe, were the War of 
the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War. 

473. War of the Austrian Succession (i740-i748). The very 
year that Frederick II ascended the Prussian throne the last 
of the direct male line of the Hapsburgs, the Emperor Charles VI, 
died. Now not long before his death Charles had bound all 
the leading powers of Europe to a sort of agreement called the 
Pragmatic Sanction, by the terms of which, in case he should 
leave no son, all his hereditary dominions should descend to his 



§474] THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 415 

elder daughter, Maria Theresa.^ But no sooner was Charles dead 
than a number of princes each laid claim to all or to portions of 
the Hapsburg inheritance. Before any of these claimants, how- 
ever, had begun hostilities, Frederick, — whose father had guaran- 
teed the Pragmatic Sanction, — without any declaration of war, 
marched his army into Silesia and took forcible possession of that ' 
country. Frederick's act was an act of pure brigandage. He 
himself frankly tells posterity that the mixed motives under which 
he acted were a desire to augment his dominions, to render him- 
self and Prussia respected in Europe, and to "acquire fame." 

Almost all Europe was soon in arms. England, the Protestant 
Netherlands, and eventually Russia were drawn into the war as 
allies of Maria Theresa. The theater of the struggle came to 
embrace India and the French and English colonies in the New 
World. Macaulay's well-known words picture the world-wide range 
of the conflagration which Frederick's act had kindled: "In order 
that he might rob a neighbor," he says, "whom he had promised 
to defend, black men fought on the coast of Coromandel, and red 
men scalped each other by the Great Lakes of North America." 

The war went on until 1748, when it was closed by the Peace 
of Aix-la-Chapelle. Carlyle's summing up of the provisions of 
the various treaties of this peace can be easily remembered, and 
is not misleading as to the essentials: "To Frederick, Silesia; as 
to the rest, wholly as they were." 

474. The Seven Years' War (1756-1 763). During the eight 
years of peace which now followed, Maria Theresa was busy form- 
ing a -league of the chief European powers against the unscrupu- 
lous despoiler of her dominions. Russia, Sweden, many of the 
states of the Germanic body, and France all ultimately entered 
into an alliance with the queen. Frederick could at first find no 
ally save England, — towards the close of the war Russia came 
for a short time to his side, — so that he was left almost alone to 
fight the armies of half the Continent.^ 

1 The imperial crown could not of course be worn by her. 

2 The population of Prussia at this time was about 5,000,000 ; the aggregate popula- 
tion of the states leagued against her is estimated at 100,000,000. 



41 6 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§474 

The long war is known in European history as the Seven Years' 
War. At the very outset it became mixed with what in American 
history is called the French and Indian War. For a time fortune 
was on Frederick's side. In the celebrated battles of Rossbach, 
Leuthen, and Zorndorf he defeated successively the French, the 
Austrians, and the Russians, and startled all Europe into an ac- 
knowledgment of the fact that the armies of Prussia had at their 
head one of the greatest commanders of history. 

But fortune finally deserted Frederick. In sustaining the un- 
equal contest his dominions became drained of men, and inevi- 
table ruin seemed to impend over his throne and kingdom. But 
just at this time a change by death in the government of Russia 
put a new face upon affairs. In 1762 Empress Elizabeth of that 
country died, and Peter III, an ardent admirer of Frederick, came 
to the throne, and immediately transferred the armies of Russia 
from the side of the allies to that of Prussia. The alliance lasted 
only a few months, Peter being deposed and murdered by his 
wife, who now came to the throne as Catherine II. She adopted 
a neutral policy and recalled her armies; but the temporary alli- 
ance had given Frederick a decisive advantage, and the year fol- 
lowing Russia's withdrawal, England and France were glad to 
give over the struggle and sign the Peace of Paris (1763). Shortly 
after this another peace (the Treaty of Hubertsburg) was arranged 
between Austria and Prussia, and one of the most terrible wars that 
had ever disturbed Europe was over. Silesia was left in the hands 
of Frederick. 

The Seven Years' War was one of the decisive combats -of his- 
tory. Besides the Anglo-French question in India (sect. 483), it 
settled two other questions of vast reach and signiiicance. First, 
it settled, or at least put in the way of final settlement, the Austro- 
Prussian question, — the question as to whether Austria or Prussia 
should be leader in Germany. It made Prussia the equal of Aus- 
tria and foreshadowed her ascendancy. Second, it settled the 
Anglo-French question in America, a question like the Austro- 
Prussian question in Europe. It decided that North America 
should belong to the Anglo-Saxon and not to the Latin race. 



§475] FREDERICK ROUNDS OUT HIS DOMINIONS 417 

475. Frederick rounds out his Dominions at the Expense of 
Poland. It was about a decade after the close of the Seven 
Years' War that Frederick, as has already been related, joined 
with Catherine II of Russia and Maria Theresa of Austria in the 
First Partition of Poland (sect. 467). 

Respecting the value to Prussia of the territory she received 
in this transaction, Frederick in his History oj my Own Times 
comments as follows: "This was one of the most important 
acquisitions we could possibly make, because it joined Pomerania 
and Eastern Prussia [see map, p. 414], and by rendering us mas- 
ters of the Vistula, we gained the double advantage of being able 
to defend this kingdom and of levying very considerable tolls on 
the Vistula, the whole trade of Poland being carried on upon that 
river." But this aggrandizement of Prussia was secured only by 
just such a cynical disregard of international honesty by Frederick 
as marked his annexation of Silesia. 

476. Frederick's Political Philosophy and Statecraft. As 
the foregoing sections have disclosed, in all matters concerning 
foreign states, expediency was Frederick's only guide; he did 
whatever he thought would aggrandize Prussia and glorify himself, 
without any regard to truth, honesty, and honor. The following 
are some of his avowed principles: ''If there is anything to be 
gained by it, we will be honest; if deception is necessary, let us 
be cheats." ''The permanent principle for princes is to aggrandize 
their dominions as far as their power permits them to do so." 
"Is it better that a people should perish, or that a prince should 
break his treaty? Where would one find the imbecile who would 
hesitate in answering this question?"^ "What man of honor 
would ever wage war if he had not the right to make those 
rules permitting of plunder, fire, and carnage ? " 

It was this immoral political philosophy and statecraft, so 
cynically proclaimed by Frederick the Great, which, inherited and 
practiced by a later Hohenzollern (Emperor William II), was the 
fundamental cause of the great world catastrophe of 19 14. 

1 Note the answer made to this question by Albert, King of the Belgians, and his 
Ministers, sect. 707. 



4i8 THE RISE OF RUSSIA [§477 

477. Frederick as an Enlightened Despot. Frederick in all 
his relations to his own subjects had a wholly different moral 
standard from that which he adopted in his dealings with his 
brother sovereigns. So just and exalted was his conception of 
his kingly office, and so worthy the use he made of it, that he 
has been assigned a place among the Enlightened Despots of the 
eighteenth century. 

During the intervals of peace between his great wars, and for the 
half of his, reign which followed the Peace of Hubertsburg, Fred- 
erick labored to develop the resources of his dominions and to 
promote the material welfare of his people. He dug canals, con- 
structed roads, drained marshes, encouraged agriculture and manu- 
factures, and improved in every possible way the administration 
of the government. 

But Frederick's attention was not wholly engrossed with look- 
ing after the material well-being of his subjects. He was a philoso- 
pher and believed himself to be a poet, and usually spent several 
hours each day in philosophical and literary pursuits. It has been 
said of him that "he divided with Voltaire the intellectual mon- 
archy of the eighteenth century." He gathered about him a 
company selected from among the most distinguished authors, sci- 
entists, and philosophers of the age, among whom was his "co- 
sovereign" Voltaire, whom Frederick coaxed to Berlin to add 
brilliancy to his court and to criticize and correct his verses. 
Frederick felt very proud — for a time — of this acquisition, and 
rejoiced that to his other titles he could now add that of "the 
Possessor of Voltaire." But it was an ill-assorted friendship ; 
the two "sovereigns" soon quarreled, and Voltaire was dismissed 
from court in disgrace. 

Frederick was a freethinker. His paganism made him indiffer- 
ent toward all religions, and hence tolerant. He said in effect, as 
Carlyle reports him, "In this country every man must get to 
heaven in his own way." The company which he gathered at 
Sans Souci, his favorite palace at Potsdam, near Berlin, was a 
most extraordinary collection of heretics, agnostics, misbelievers, 
and unbelievers. It was a company very representative of that 



§477] REFERENCES 419 

learned literary and philosophical society of the eighteenth cen- 
tury whose ideas and teachings did so much to prepare the way 
for the French Revolution. 

It was on the very eve of this great political and social upheaval 
that Frederick died, — in 1786. Carlyle calls him 'Hhe last of 
the kings." He was of course not the last in name, but he was 
the last to receive the title of " Great." Only three years after he 
had been laid in the tomb broke out the revolution which closed 
the Age of the Kings and ushered in the Age of the People. 

Selections from the Sources. Memoirs of Frederica Sophia WilhelmiTia 
(Margravine of Baireuth, sister of Frederick the Great). These memoirs form 
one of the most graphic and piquant autobiographies ever written. They hold 
striking portraits of the author's savage father, Frederick William I, of her 
brother, to whom she was devotedly attached, and of many other distinguished 
contemporaries. But Wilhelmina's lively imagination and her mischievous if 
not malicious spirit caused her to overcolor and to exaggerate. Consequently 
the numerous portraits which she delights in sketching, while always interesting 
and often amusing, are not to be taken too seriously. Robinson, J. H., Readings 
itt Ejiropean Histoiy,\o\.\\, pp. 315-328. 

Secondary Works. Tuttle, H., History of Prussia, 4 vols. (This work was 
unhappily interrupted at the year 1757 by the death of the author.) Mar- 
riott, J. A. R., and Robertson, C. G., The Evolution of Prussia, chaps, i-iv. 
Reddaway, W. F., Frederick the Great and the Rise of Prussia. Carlyle, T., 
History of Friedrich the Second, 5 vols. (This is one of Carlyle's masterpieces. 
Like his Fretich Revolution, it will be best appreciated if read after some 
acquaintance with its subject has been gained from other sources. It deals 
almost exclusively with Frederick's twenty-three years of war and utterly neg- 
lects or minimizes the twenty-three of his reign which were years of peace.) 
Longman, F. W., Frederick the Great and the Seven Veals' War. Bright, J. F., 
Maria Theresa. Macaulay, T. B., Essay on Frederick the Great. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The Teutonic Knights and the beginnings 
of Prussia: Henderson, E. F., Short Histoiy of Germatiy (ed. 1902), vol. i, 
chap, viii, pp. 172-181. 2. Frederick the Great's boyhood, character, and 
political philosophy : Marriott, J. A. R., and Robertson, C. G., The Evolutiofi 
of Prussia, chap, iv, pp. 113-119. 3. Frederick the Great as an Enlightened 
Despot : Bourne, H. E., The Revolutionary Period iti Europe, chap, iv, pp. 48-51. 



CHAPTER XXXI 
ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

478. The Formula for Eighteenth-Century English History. 
"The expansion of England in the New World and in Asia/' says 
Professor Seeley, "is the formula which sums up for England the 
history of the eighteenth century." 

This expansion movement was simply the continuation of a 
maritime trade-development which had begun in the sixteenth 
century, and which had shaped large sections of the history of 
England by bringing her into sharp rivalry first with Spain 
and then with the Dutch Netherlands. Before the close of the 
seventeenth century England had practically triumphed over both 
these commercial rivals. Her great and dangerous rival in the 
eighteenth century was France. "The whole period," says Seeley, 
referring to the period between 1688 and 181 5, "stands out as an 
age of gigantic rivalry between England and France, a kind of 
second Hundred Years' War. 

To indicate from the viewpoint of English history the chief 
episodes in this great struggle between the two rivals for suprem- 
acy in the commercial and colonial world will be our chief aim 
in the present chapter. W'e shall, however, in order to render 
more complete our sketch of this century of English history, 
touch upon some other matters of special interest and significance, 
though connected in no direct manner with the dominant move- 
ment of the period. 

479. War of the Spanish Succession (1701-1714). Respect- 
ing the causes and results of this war we have already spoken in 
connection with the reign of Louis XIV (sect. 406). Of what was 
there said we need here recall only the enumeration of the 
territorial gains which the war brought to England; namely, 

420 



§480] UNION OF ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND 421 

Gibraltar and the island of Minorca in the Old World, and Nova 
Scotia, together with a clear title to Newfoundland and the Hud- 
son Bay Territory, in the New. 

Of special interest in the present connection is that clause of 
the treaty between England and Spain whereby England took 
away from the French and secured for English merchants the 
contract known as the "Assiento," which gave English subjects 
the sole right for thirty years of shipping annually forty-eight 
hundred African slaves to the Spanish colonies in America.^ 
This slave trade was as lucrative a traffic as the old spice trade, 
and at this time was some such object of rivalry among the com- 
mercial states of Europe as that had formerly been. The secur- 
ing of this contract by England made her the chief slave-trading 
power in the world. 

At the same time that England got the Assiento contract she 
secured from Spain the further right to send each year one vessel 
on a trading voyage to Spanish America. 

Thus as results of the first war of the eighteenth century Eng- 
land had got practical control of the INIediterranean, had secured 
a monopoly of the lucrative slave trade with the Spanish colonies, 
had made a beginning of wresting from France her possessions in 
the New World, and had gained mastery of the seas. '^Before 
the war," says Mahan, "England was one of the sea powers; 
after it she was the sea power, without any second." 

480. Parliamentary Union of England and Scotland (1707). 
The most noteworthy matter in the domestic history of England 
during the reign of Queen Anne was the union of the Parliaments 
of England and Scotland." At this time England, dealing with 
Scotland as though it were a foreign state, shut out the Scotch 
traders not only from the English colonies but also from the 
English home market. 

1 The Papal Line of Demarcation (sect. 279) and treaty engagements with the Portu- 
guese shut the Spaniards out from Africa, and hence they had to depend upon inter- 
mediaries to fetch them slaves from thence. The Dutch had had the contract before the 
French. For an account of the Assiento and the economic condition at this time of 
Spanish America, see Moses, Establishment of Spanish Ride in America, chap. xi. 

2 It was only the crowns of the two kingdoms which were united upon the accession 
of the House of Stuart to the English throne in 1603. 



42 2 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§481 

The feeling in Scotland against England became intense, and 
there were threats of breaking the dynastic ties which united 
the two countries. The English government, realizing the danger 
which lurked in the situation, — for the national sentiment in Scot- 
land was still strong, — at last met the Scots in a spirit of rea- 
sonable compromise. It was agreed that the Parliaments of the 
two countries should be united, that perfect free trade should be 
established between them, and that all the English colonies should 
be open to Scotch traders. On this basis was brought about the 
union of the two realms into a single kingdom under the name 
of Great Britain (1707). From this time forward the two coun- 
tries were represented by one Parliament sitting at Westminster. 

The union was advantageous to both countries, for it was a 
union not simply of hands but of hearts. England's constant 
and costly watch of her northern frontiers through ten centuries 
against raid and invasion could now be intermitted. As to Scot- 
land, her entrance into England's home and colonial markets 
and her participation in English manufacturing and commercial 
enterprises resulted in a wonderful expansion of her energies 
and resources. Ten years after the union the first Scotch vessel 
intended for the transatlantic trade was launched on the Clyde. 
To-day the Clyde is one of the chief centers of the shipbuilding 
industry, and Glasgow one of the busiest seaports of the world. 

481. The Sovereign's Loss of Political Influence; the Prime 
Minister and the Cabinet. The first Hanoverian king,^ George I 
(171 4- 1727), was utterly ignorant of the language and the affairs 
of the people over whom he had been called to rule. On this 
account he was obliged to intrust to his ministers the practical 
administration of the government. The same was true in the 
case of George II. George III, having been born and educated 
in England, regained some of the old influence of former kings. 
But he was the last English sovereign who had any large personal 
influence in shaping governmental policies. 

1 The sovereigns of the House of Hanover are George I (1714-1727), George II 
(i 727-1 760), George III (1760-1S20), George IV (1820-1830), William IV (1830-1837), 
Victoria (1837-1901), Edward VII (1901-1910), and George V (iqio- ). 



§482] THE RISE OF METHODISM 423 

The power and patronage lost by the crown passed into the 
hands of the chief minister, popularly called the Prime Minister, 
or Premier, whose tenure of office was dependent not upon the 
good will of the sovereign but upon the support of the House of 
Commons. This transfer of power was not made all at once, but 
by the middle of the eighteenth century it was practically com- 
pleted, although this fact was not always gracefully and promptly 
recognized by the crown. In the English government of to-da}' 
the Prime Minister is the actual and fully acknowledged execu- 
tive. The king remains the titular sovereign, indeed, but all real 
power and patronage are in the hands of the Premier. 

It was during the administration of Sir Robert Walpole, the 
first English Prime Minister in the modern sense, that what is 
known as the Cabinet assumed substantially the form which it has 
at the present time. This body is practically a committee composed 
of members of Parliament, headed by the Prime Minister, and de- 
pendent for its existence upon the will of the House of Commons. 
The Premier and his colleagues stand and fall together. When 
the Cabinet can no longer command a majority in the Commons, 
its members resign, and a new Prime Minister, appointed nomi- 
nally by the sovereign, but really by the party in control of the 
House of Commons, forms a new Cabinet. 

482. The Religious Revival; the Rise of Methodism. It 
will be well for us here to turn aside from the political affairs of 
England and cast a glance upon the religious life of the time. 

In its spiritual and moral life the England of the earlier Han- 
overians was the England of the restored Stuarts. The nation 
was still under the influence of its reaction from the Puritan 
regime — the hated rule of the "Saints." Among the higher 
classes there was widespread infidelity; religion was a matter of 
jest and open scoff. The Church was dead; the higher clergy 
were neglectful of their duties; sermons were cold and formal 
essays. The lower classes were stolid, callous, and brutal. Drunk- 
enness was almost universal among high and low. The nation 
was immersed in material pursuits and was without thought or 
care for things ideal and spiritual. 



424 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§ 482 



Such a state of things in society as this has never failed to awaken 
in select souls a vehement protest. And it was so now. At Oxford, 
about the year 1730, a number of earnest young men, among 
whom we find John and Charles Wesley and George Whitefield, 
formed a little society, the object of which was mutual helpfulness 
in true Christian living. From their strict and methodical manner 

of life they were derisively 
nicknamed Methodists. 

This Oxford movement 
was the starting point of 
a remarkable religious re- 
vival. John Wesley was the 
organizer, Whitefield the 
orator, and Charles Wesley 
the poet of the movement.^ 
They and their helpers 
reached the neglected 
masses through open-air 
meetings. They preached 
in the fields, at the street 
corners, beneath the trees, 
at the great mining camps. 
The effects of their fervid 
exhortations were often as 
startling as were those of 
the appeals of the preachers 
of the Crusades. 
The leaders of the revival at first had no thought of estab- 
lishing a church distinct from the Anglican, but simply aimed 
at forming within the Established Church a society of earnest, 
devout workers, somewhat like that of the Christian Endeavor 
societies in our present churches. Their enthusiasm and their 
often extravagant manners, however, offended the staid, cold 
conservatism of the regular clergy, and they were finally 




Fig, 



82. John Wesley. (After a 
painting by G. Roiiiiuy) 



1 Charles Wesley wrote over six thousand hymns, many of which are still favorites 
in the hymnals of to-day. 



§483] 



THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR 



425 



constrained by petty persecution to go out from the established 
organization and form a church of their own. 

The revival, like the Puritan movement of the seventeenth cen- 
tury, left a deep impress upon the life of England. It is due 
largely to this movement that in true religious feeling, in social 
purity, in moral earnestness, in humanitarian endeavor the 
England of to-day is 
separated by such a 
gulf from the Eng- 
land of the first two 
Georges. 

483. The Seven 
Years' War (nse- 
1763). Just after the 
middle of the century 
there broke out be- 
tween the French and 
English colonists in 
America the so-called 
French and Indian 
War. This struggle 
became blended with 
what is known in 
European history as 
the Seven Years' War 
(sect. 474) , and conse- 
quently it is from the 
viewpoint both of Europe and of America that we must regard it. 

At first the war went disastrously against the English, — Brad- 
dock's expedition against Fort Duquesne, upon the march to 
which he suffered his memorable defeat in the wilderness, being 
but one of several ill-starred English undertakings.^ In the Old 
World Minorca had been lost, and with it virtually the control 
of the Mediterranean. Never were Englishmen cast into deeper 




Fig. 83. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham 
(After a portrait by Jv. Bronipton') 



1 Braddock's defeat occurred in 1755, before the formal declaration of war by either 
party. 



426 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§ 483 

despair. Never had they so completely lost faith in themselves. 
The Earl of Chesterfield wrote: "We are undone both at home 
and abroad. . . . We are no longer a nation." 

The gloom was at its deepest when the elder William Pitt (later 
Earl of Chatham), known as ''the Great Commoner," came to the 
head of affairs in England. Pitt was one of the greatest men the 
English race has ever produced. Frederick the Great expressed 
his estimate of him in these words: "England has at last brought 
forth a man." Pitt's estimate of himself was equally high: "I 
believe that I can save this country and that no one else can," 
was the way in which he expressed his belief in his ability to 
retrieve past misfortunes. 

The war against France was now pushed not only in America 
and upon the sea, but also in India and in Europe with renewed 
energy. The turning point of the struggle, so far as America 
was concerned, was the great victory gained by the English under 
the youthful Major General Wolfe over the French under Mont- 
calm on the Heights of Quebec (1759). The victory gave Eng- 
land Quebec, the key to the situation in the New World. 

In India also victory was declaring for the English in their 
struggle there with the French and their native allies.^ Two 
years before the battle of Quebec, Colonel Robert Clive, an 
officer in the employ of the English East India Company, with 
eleven hundred English soldiers and two thousand sepoys,^ in 
the memorable battle of Plassey (1757) had put to flight a native 
army of sixty thousand foot and horse and had thus virtually 
laid, in the northeastern region of the peninsula, the basis of 
England's great Indian Empire.^ * 

1 The situation here was somewhat similar to that in the New World. Both the 
French and the English had been long on the ground, but merely as traders, and not 
as builders of empires. About the middle of the eighteenth century, however, they 
began to conquer the country and to lay the foundations of territorial dominion. 

2 The name given native soldiers in European employ. 

3 The prelude to this battle was a terrible crime committed by Siraj-ud-Daula, viceroy 
of Bengal and other provinces. Moved by anger at the refusal of the English official to 
surrender certain fugitives, and urged on by French agents, the viceroy attacked the 
Enghsh fort and factory at Calcutta and, having secured one hundred and forty-six 
prisoners, thrust them into a contracted guardroom which was provided with only two 
small grated windows, — what in the story of India is known as "the Black Hole of 



§484] THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION 427 

The end came in 1763 with the Peace of Paris. France ceded 
to England Canada and all her possessions in North America east 
of the Mississippi River, save New Orleans and a little adjoining 
land (which, along with the French territory west of the Missis- 
sippi, had already been given to Spain), and two little islands in 
the neighborhood of Newfoundland, which she was allowed to 
retain to dry fish on. She also withdrew from India as a political 
rival of England.^ England's supremacy in the colonial world 
and her mastery of the sea were now firmly established. This 
position, notwithstanding severe losses of which we shall speak 
immediately, she has maintained up to the present day. 

484. The American Revolution (1775-1 783). The French 
and Indian War was the prelude to the War of American Inde- 
pendence. The overthrow of the French power in America made 
the English colonists less dependent than hitherto upon the 
mother country, since this removed their only dangerous rival 
and enemy on the continent. Clear-sighted statesmen had pre- 
dicted that when the colonists no longer needed England's help 
against the French they would sever the bonds uniting them to 
the homeland, if at any time these bonds chafed them. 

And very soon the bonds did chafe. A majority in Parliament, 
thinking that the colonists should help pay the expenses of colo- 
nial defense, insisted upon taxing them. The colonists main- 
tained that they could be justly taxed only through their own 
legislative assemblies. The British government refusing to ac- 
knowledge this principle, the colonists took up arms in defense 
of those rights and liberties which their fathers had won with so 
hard a struggle from English kings on English soil. 

The French government seized the opportunity presented by 
the war to avenge itself upon England for the loss of Canada,^ and 

Calcutta." During the course of a sultry night all but twenty-three of the unfortunate 
prisoners died of suffocation. It was in response to the cry which arose for vengeance 
that Robert Clive was sent by the English officials at Madras to succor Bengal. 

1 Pondicherry, a French trading post on the eastern coast of India, was restored to 
France, and she still remained in the peninsula as a trader ; but her political power was 
as completely broken there by the war as in America. 

• There were other and more admirable motives animating many of the individual 
Frenchmen who, like Lafayette, fought on the side of the American patriots (sect. 503). 



42 8 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§485 

gave aid to the colonists. Spain and Holland also were both drawn 
into the struggle, fighting against their old-time rival and foe. 

The war was ended by the Peace of Paris (1783). England 
acknowledged the independence of the thirteen colonies, — and 
a Greater England began its separate career in the New World. 
At the same time England was constrained to restore or to cede 
various islands and territories to France and to Spain. The 
magnificent empire with which she had emerged from the Seven 
Years' War seemed shattered and ruined beyond recovery. Not 
only England's enemies but many Englishmen themselves believed 
that her days of imperial rule were ended. 

But there were yet left to England Canada and India; and 
only recently Australia had come into her possession (sect. 671). 
And then England was yet mistress of the seas; her commercial 
supremacy remained unshaken. There were elements here which 
might become factors of a new empire greater than the one which 
had been lost. But no Englishman standing in the gloom of the 
year 1783 could look far enough into the future to foresee the 
greatness and splendor of England's second empire which was to 
rise out of the ruins of the first. 

485. Legislative Independence of Ireland (i782). While the 
War of American Independence was going on, the Irish, taking 
advantage of the embarrassment of the English government, 
demanded legislative independence. Since the Norman period 
Ireland had had a Parliament of her own, but it was dependent 
upon the English crown, and at this time was subordinate to 
the English Parliament, which asserted and exercised the right 
to bind Ireland by its laws. This the Anglo-Irish patriots strenu- 
ously resisted and drew up a Declaration of Rights wherein they 
demanded the legislative independence of Ireland. Fear of a 
revolt led England to grant the demands of the patriots and 
acknowledge the independence of the Irish Parliament. 

486. The Abolition of the Slave Trade. Intimately con- 
nected with the great religious revival led by the Wesleys and 
Whitefield were certain philanthropic movements which hold a 
prominent place in the history of the moral and social life not 



§487] THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION 429 

only of England but of humanity. The most noteworthy of these 
was that resulting in the abolition of the African slave trade. 

We have noticed how at the opening of the eighteenth century 
England secured from Spain the contract for providing her Amer- 
ican colonies with negro slaves (sect. 479). There was then little 
or no moral disapproval of this iniquitous traffic. But one effect 
of the religious revival was the calling into existence of much 
genuine philanthropic feeling. This sentiment expressed itself in 
a movement for the abolition of the inhuman trade. 

The leaders of the movement were Thomas Clarkson (1760- 
1846) and William Wilberforce (i 759-1833). The terrible dis- 
closures which were made of the atrocious cruelty of the slave 
dealers stirred the public indignation and awakened the national 
conscience. Finally, in 1807, after twenty years of agitation a 
law was passed abolishing the trade.^ This signaled as great 
a moral victory as ever was won in the English Parliament, for it 
was the aroused moral sentiment of the nation which was the main 
force that carried the reform measure through the Houses.^ 

487. The Industrial Revolution. W^e turn now from the 
political, religious, and moral realms to the industrial domain. 
In this sphere of English life the latter part of the eighteenth 
century witnessed a wonderful revolution. It was England's 
commercial supremacy which had prepared the way for the great 
industrial development. The outward movement had created a 
world-wide market for English goods. She had become "the 
workshop of the world." Naturally manufactures were encour- 
aged, and inventive genius and ingenuity stimulated to the utmost 
in devising improved processes in the industrial arts. The result 
was an industrial revolution such as the centuries known to his- 
tory had never witnessed before. 

1 England had been anticipated by Denmark in the condemnation of the slave trade. 
That country had abolished the traffic in 1802. In the United States the importation of 
slaves was illegal after 1S08. Before 1820 most civilized states had placed the trade 
under the ban. 

2 Another important humanitarian movement of the century was that of prison reform. 
This was effected chiefly through the labors of a single person, the philanthropist John 
Howard (1726-1790), who devoted his hfe to effecting a reform in prison conditions and 
discipline. 



430 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§487 

In order that we may get the right point of view here and be 
able to appreciate the importance of the industrial revolution 
of which we speak, it is necessary that we should first note the 
remarkable fact that while civilization during historic times had 
made great advances on many lines and in many domains, in 
the industrial realm it had remained almost stationary from the 
dawn of history. At the middle of the eighteenth century all the 
industrial arts were being carried on in practically the same way 
that they were followed six or seven thousand years before in 
Egypt and Babylonia. 

Suddenly all this was changed by a few inventions. About 1767 
Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny. From the beginning 
of history, indeed from a period lost in the obscurity of prehistoric 
times, all the thread used in weaving had been made by twisting 
each thread separately. The spinning jenny, when perfected,^ 
with a single attendant twisted hundreds of threads at once. 
Within twenty years from the time of this invention there were 
between four and five million spindles in use in England. 

It was now possible to produce thread in unlimited quantities. 
The next thing needed was improved machinery for weaving it 
into cloth. This was soon provided by Cartwright's power loom 
(1785). The next requisite was motive power to run the new 
machinery. At just this time James Watt brought out his inven- 
tion, or rather improvement, of the steam engine (1785). In its 
ruder form it had been used in the mines; now it was introduced 
into the factories. 

The primary forces of the great industrial revolution — the 
spinning jenny, the power loom, and the steam engine — were 
now at work. The application, in the first half of the nineteenth 
century, of the steam engine to transportation purposes gave the 
world the steam railroad and the steamship. 

These inventions and discoveries in the industrial realm mark 
an epoch in the history of civilization. We have to go back to 
prehistoric times to find in this domain any inventions or dis- 
coveries like them in their import for human progress. There is 

1 It was perfected by Arkvvright and Crompton by 1779. 



§488] ENGLAND AND THE NEW INDUSTRY 431 

nothing between Menes in Egypt and George III in England 
with which to compare them. The discovery of fire, the invention 
of metal tools, and the domestication of animals and plants,^ — 
these inventions and achievements of prehistoric man are alone 
worthy, in their transforming effect upon human society, of being 
placed alongside them. 

488. Import to England of the Industrial Revolution. In the 
present connection we can note the bearing of the great industrial 
revolution upon only one episode in the general historical move- 
ment. It exerted a determining influence upon the course and 
issue of the great French Revolution and of the Napoleonic Wars 
which grew out of it.. It armed England for the great fight and 
enabled her to play the important part she did in that period of 
titanic struggle. "It is our improved steam engine," says Lord 
Jeffrey in his eulogy of Watt (written in 1819), "which has fought 
the battles of Europe and exalted and sustained through the late 
treniendous contest the political greatness of our land." It was 
the steam engine that created the wealth which England used 
so profusely in carrying on the fight against Napoleon and which 
did more perhaps than any other force in giving direction to the 
course of events during the years of his domination.^ 

489. Conclusion. With the French Revolution we reach a 
period in which English history must be regarded from the view- 
point of France. Indeed, for the space of half a generation after 
the rise of Napoleon to power, all European history becomes 
largely biographical and centers about that unique personality. 
Consequently we shall drop the story of English history at this 
point and let it blend with the story of the Revolution and that 
of the Napoleonic Empire. 

All that we here need notice is that the Napoleonic Wars, in 
their Anglo-French phase, were essentially a continuation — and 
the end — of the second Hundred Years' War between England 

1 See Ancient History, 2d Rev. Ed., sects. S-io. 

2 The Industrial Revolution was effected in England several decades in advance of 
its invasion of continental Europe, partly because of her commercial supremacy and the 
world-wide markets open to her manufacturers and partly because of the abundance of 
her coal and iron supplies. 



432 ENGLAND IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY [§489 

and France. Napoleon, having seized supreme power in France, 
endeavored to destroy England's commercial supremacy and to 
regain for France that position in the colonial world from which 
she had been thrust by England. But this tremendous struggle, 
like all the others in which England had engaged with her ancient 
foe, — save the one in which she lost her American colonies, — 
only resulted, as we shall see later, in bringing into her hands 
additional colonial possessions and in placing her naval power 
and commercial supremacy on a firmer basis than ever before. 

Selections from the Sources. Henderson, E. F., Side' Li^:^7its on English 
History, pp. 214-2S3 ; Kendall, li. K., Soinre-Book, chaps, xvi-xviii, particularly 
Extract No. iii, "A View of Ireland in the Eighteenth Century," by Swift. 
For the slave trade, see Clarkson, T., T/ic History of the J^ise, Progress, and 
Accotnplishment of the Abolition of the Slave Trade by the British Parliament. 
Clarkson was himself a main instrument in bringing about the great reform. 
Robinson, J. H., Peadi?igs in European Hisioiy, vol. ii, pp. 336-356. 

Secondary Works. For the most suggestive short work on the period, 
turn to Sef.i.ey, J. R., The Expansion of England. Written on somewhat simi- 
lar lines is Caldecott, A., English Colonization a7id Empi7-e, chaps, iii-v. 
Lecky, W. E. H., History of England in the Eighteetith Century, 7 vols., is the 
best comprehensive work. Lavell, C. F., and Payne, C. E., Itnpe^-ial England, 
chaps, iv-vi. For the naval history of the period, see Mahan, A. T., The In- 
flnenee of Sea Power iipon Histoiy, chaps, v-xiv. 

Biographies: Morley, J., Walpole; Southey, R., Life of Wesley; Green, 
W. D., William Pitt, Earl of Chatham ; Harrison, F., Chatham ; Macaulay, 
T. B., Essays on Horace Walpole, the Earl of Chatham (two essays), Lord 
Clive, and Warren Hastings. 

For the growth of the English Cabinet : Blauvelt, M. T., The Development 
of Cabinet Gove7-nment ifi England; and Jenks, E., Parliamentary England. 
For the rise of Methodism : Overton, J. H., The Evangelical Revival in the 
Eighteenth Century. For the French and English in America: Fiske, J., N'etu 
England and A\";o 7vw;?r^, chaps, vii-x ; and Parkman, Y ., Montcalm and 
Wolfe, 1 vols. For the conflict between England and her American colonies : 
Lecky, W. E. IL, The Ame?-ican Revolution (ed. by James Albert Woodburn). 
For industrial and social England : Cheyney, E. P., An Introduction to the 
Industrial and Social History of England, chap. viii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The industrial revolution in England : Bourne, 
H. E., The Revolutionary Pej-iod in Europe, chap. vi. 2. The struggle between 
England and France for colonial supremacy : Seignobos, C, History of Con- 
temporaiy Civilization, pp. 42-46. 3. Extract from speech of Earl Chatham on 
England's policy towards the American colonies : Kendall, E. K., Source-Book 
of English Historv, pp. 350-354. 



CHAPTER XXXII 

AUSTRIA UNDER THE BENEVOLENT DESPOT, 
EMPEROR JOSEPH II 

(1780-1790) 

490. Emperor Joseph IPs Ideal and Aim. Most worthy of 
remembrance among the royal contemporaries of Frederick the 
Great was Emperor Joseph II, the son of the Empress-Queen 
Maria Theresa. He became Emperor in 1765, and upon the 
death of his mother in 1780 succeeded to the sovereignty of the 
Austrian dominions. He was the best, though not the greatest, 
of the Enlightened Despots. 

Joseph IPs aim was to make of the Austrian dominions an 
ideal state. This, in his conception, was a state possessing geo- 
graphical and moral unity; that is to say, a state with well- 
rounded scientific frontiers, with all power concentrated in the 
hands of the sovereign, with all its provinces ruled alike, and 
with all its inhabitants using the same language and having the 
same ideas, customs, and aspirations. 

491. His Reforms. Now the Austrian monarchy was just the 
opposite of all this. Joseph's endeavor was to make it like France, 
compact geographically and homogeneous in language and cus- 
toms. He wiped out many of the old divisions based on race, 
language, and historical antecedents, and in the interest of uni- 
formity and simplicity of administration divided a great part 
of the monarchy into thirteen provinces, and each of these again 
into smaller subdivisions called circles. He abolished serfdom in 
several of his states. He closed over two thousand monasteries 
and devoted their property to the establishment of colleges, hos- 
pitals, and other public institutions. He issued a celebrated Edict 
of Toleration (1781), giving to all Christian sects equality of 
rights and privileges. He provided the cities of his dominions 

433 



434 AUSTRIA UNDER JOSEPH II [§ 492 

with schools in which all the pupils were taught exactly the same 
lessons in exactly the same way. He founded libraries and 
encouraged research. He softened the harsh punishments of 
the mediaeval criminal code and made the laws to conform to 
reason. He fostered manufactures, and by his own laborious life 
— he is said to have worked more hours each day than any 
other man in his dominions — set an example of industry to 
his subjects. 

492. His Dealings with the Austrian Netherlands and with 
Hungary. In the furtherance of his plans Joseph attempted to 
reduce the Austrian Netherlands, which constituted almost an 
independent state loosely united to Austria, to the condition of 
an administrative province of the Austrian monarchy. He dis- 
regarded the constitution, laws, and customs of the provinces, 
interfered with the religion of the people, and substituted for the 
existing system of education a new system conforming to his 
own ideas of what should be taught the youth. Angered by all 
this meddling with their affairs, the Netherlanders rose in open 
revolt and declared themselves independent of the Austrian 
crown (1790). 

At the same time Joseph drove his Hungarian subjects to the 
verge of rebellion by attempting to deal with Hungary in some 
such arbitrary way as he had dealt with the Netherlands, — in a 
word, to Germanize the country. The situation became so threat- 
ening that Joseph, upon his dying bed, was constrained to annul 
all his reform measures and put everything back as it was, save as 
regards the serfs, who retained the freedom with which he had 
dowered them. 

493. Causes of the Failure of Joseph II's Attempted 
Reforms. The Emperor Joseph II is one of the most pathetic 
figures in history. He died in 1790, a weary, heartbroken man, 
lamenting that though he had labored his life through to make his 
subjects contented and happy and to deserve their love, he had 
simply filled his empire with unrest and unhappiness, and instead 
of winning the gratitude of his subjects had awakened only their 
ingratitude. 



§494] REFORM FROM ABOVE 43 S 

The most of Joseph's attempted reforms, save those of the 
abohtion of serfdom and the revision of the laws, had in truth 
resulted in dismal failures. This was not because much he aimed 
to do was not in sad need of being done, but because in such 
matters the good intention is not sufficient without patience and 
wisdom. Joseph had neither. Frederick the Great said of him, 
"Joseph is a good man, but he always takes the second step be- 
fore he takes the first." This lack of patience to begin at the 
beginning and to wait for results is well shown in his method 
of creating a park: at great expense he set out full-grown trees 
instead of saplings. 

And Joseph lacked that wisdom which recognizes that the 
reformer must take account of the beliefs, habits, and prejudices 
of men and of races. As his biographer Paganel comments, "It 
is only in the hands of God that man is as clay." 

494. Reform from Above versus Reform from Below. 
Jjoseph II was one of the last of the benevolent despots.^ Europe 
owes much to them. Some of their reforms were permanent and 
effected great amelioration in the condition of the people in several 
of the countries of the Continent. But the Enlightened Despots 
were hampered in their work through being despots. Their theory 
of government shut out the people from all participation in the 
work of reform. But all true reform must proceed from below and 
not from above. As Buckle in his History of Civilization in Eng- 
land writes, "No reform can produce real good unless it is the 
work of public opinion, and unless the people themselves take 
the initiative." 

Nor should reforms inaugurated be dependent upon a single life. 
This was a fatal weakness in the movement of reform by the kings 
themselves. When a benevolent despot died, too often his work 
ended with his life. 

1 A striking phenomenon of the period of the reforming absolute sovereigns was the 
fall of the Jesuits. In 1759 they were expelled from Portugal; in 1764 they were sup- 
pressed in France, and three years later were expelled from the country; in 1767 they 
were driven out from Spain ; and finally, in 1773, the society was abolished by the Pope. 
(It was reestablished in 1814.) One cause of the fall of the Order was that it stood in 
the way of the centralizing policy of the absolute sovereigns ; it had come to form a sort 
of state within the state. 



436 AUSTRIA UNDER JOSEPH II [§ 494 

The year preceding the death of Joseph II the French Revolu- 
tion had begun. The people as well as their kings had been study- 
ing the philosophers and the political economists, and they were 
now themselves to assume the role of reformers. We shall see 
with what success they met in their new part. 

References. Bright, J. F., Joseph IJ (the best short biography of the 
Emperor in English). CoXE, History of the House of Austria, vol. iii, 
chaps, cxxiv-cxxxi. Hassall, A., The Balance of Power, iji^-iySg, chap. xiii. 
Stephens, IT. M., Syllabus of Lectures on Modern European History, lect. xlvii 
(gives a helpful summary of Emperor Joseph's policies and reforms). Seigno- 
BOS, C, History of Contemporary Civilization, pp. 75-80. Bourne, H. E., The 
Revolutionary Period in Europe, pp. 51-55- 



//. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND THE 
NAPOLEONIC ERA 

(1789-1815) 

CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

(1789-1799) 

I. CAUSES OF THE REVOLUTION; THE STATES-GENERAL 

OF 1789 

495. Introductory. The French Revolution was a revolt of 
the French people against royal despotism and class privilege. 
V Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" was the motto of the Revo- 
lution. In the name of these principles great crimes were indeed 
committed, but these excesses of the Revolution are not to be 
confounded with its true spirit and aims. The French people in 
1789 contended for substantially the same principles that the 
English people defended in 1642 and 1688, and that the Amer- 
ican colonists maintained in 1776. It is only as we view them 
in this light that we can- feel a sympathetic interest in the men 
and events of this tumultuous period of French history. 

496. Causes of the Revolution. Chief among the causes of 
the French Revolution were the abuses and extravagances of the 
Bourbon monarchy, the unjust privileges enjoyed by the nobil- 
ity and the higher clergy, the wretched condition of the poorer 
classes of the people, and the revolutionary character and spirit 
of French philosophy and literature. To these must be added, as 
a proximate cause, the influence of the American Revolution. 
We will speak briefly of these several matters. 

497. The Bourbon Monarchy. We simply repeat what we 
have already learned when we say that the authority of the French 
crown under the Bourbons had become unbearably despotic and 

437 



438 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§498 

oppressive. The life and property of every person in France were 
at the arbitrary .disposal of the king. Persons were thrown into 
prison without even knowing the offense for which they were 
arrested. Lettres de cachet, or sealed warrants for arrest, were 
even signed by the king in blank and given to his favorites to use 
against their personal enemies. 

The taxes were imposed by the authority of the king alone. 
They struck the poor rather than the rich, the nobles and the 
clergy being practically exempt. In consequence of a miserable 
and corrupt system of collection,^ not more than one half or two 
thirds of the money wrung from the taxpayers ever reached the 
royal treasury. 

The most oppressive of the various taxes was the salt tax 
(gabelle), which was a state monopoly. In some districts every 
family was forced to buy annually seven pounds of salt for each 
member of the household above seven years of age. 

The public money thus harshly and wastefully collected was in 
large part squandered in maintaining a court the scandalous 
extravagances and debaucheries of which would shame a Turkish 
sultan. 

Meanwhile all public works and all national interests, after the 
reign of Louis XIV, were utterly neglected. Louis XV, it is asserted, 
"probably spent more money on his harem than on any depart- 
ment of state." Louis XVI was sincerely desirous of reform. So 
far as good intentions go, he deserves a place among the best of 
the benevolent despots. But unfortunately he did not possess the 
qualities essential in a reformer; he was weak and irresolute. 
Besides, it was too late. Matters had gone too far. France was 
already caught in the rapids that sweep down to the abyss of 
revolution. 

498. The Nobility. The French nobility on the eve of the 
Revolution numbered probably between twenty and thirty thou- 
sand families, comprising about a hundred or a hundred and fifty 

1 A large part of the taxes were farmed ; that is, a body of capitalists were given the 
contract of collecting them. These farmers, as they were called, paid the government a 
sum agreed upon ; all over this amount which they collected formed their profits. 



§499] THE CLERGY 439 

thousand persons. Although owning perhaps one fifth of the 
soil of France and exercising many vexatious feudal rights over 
much of the land belonging to peasant proprietors, still these 
nobles paid scarcely any taxes. 

The higher nobility were chiefly the pensioners of the king, 
the ornaments of his court, living a great part of the year in 
riotous luxury at Paris and Versailles. Stripped of their ancient 
power, they still retained all the old pride and arrogance of their 
order and clung tenaciously to the shreds of their feudal privileges 
and exemptions. The rents of their estates, with which they 
supplemented the bounty of the king, were wrung from their 
wretched tenants with pitiless severity. The lesser nobles were 
more generally found on their estates, many of them living in 
a humble and pinched way not very different from that of 
the peasants. 

499. The Clergy. The upper clergy formed a decayed feudal 
hierarchy. A third of the lands of France was in their hands, 
and this immense property was almost wholly exempt from 
taxation. The bishops and abbots were usually drawn from the 
ranks of the nobility, being attracted to the service of the Church 
rather by its enormous revenues and the social distinction con- 
ferred by its offices than by the inducements of piety. They 
owed their position to royal appointment, and commonly spent 
their princely incomes, derived from the Church properties and 
the tithe exacted from the peasants, in luxurious life at court. 

The relation of these "patrician prelates" to the people and 
to the humbler clergy should be carefully noted, otherwise cer- 
tain im.portant phases of the Revolution will not be understood. 
Though there were noble exceptions, the most of these dignitaries 
were narrow-minded and self-seeking, and many of them so shame- 
lessly immoral that as a class they had lost all credit and authority 
with the people whose shepherds they ostensibly were. And not 
only had they discredited themselves, but they had brought the 
Church and even Christianity itself into disrepute. The hatred 
the people felt towards them was transferred to the religion which 
they so unworthily represented. 



440 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [^500 

The lower clergy, made up in the main of humble parish priests, 
were drawn largely from the peasant class, and shared their pov- 
erty. Their salaries were mere pittances compared with the 
princely incomes enjoyed by the bishops and abbots. Their 
exemplary lives and their faithfulness in the performance of the 
duties of their sacred calling presented a reproving contrast to the 
debaucheries and infidelities of their ecclesiastical superiors. They 
were naturally in sympathy with the lower classes to which by 
birth they belonged, and shared their feelings of dislike towards 
the great prelates on account of their selfish pride and odious 
arrogance. 

500. The Commons, or Third Estate. Below the two priv- 
ileged orders stood the nonprivileged commons, known as the 
Tiers Etat, or Third Estate. This class embraced all the nation 
aside from the nobility and the clergy, — that is to say, the great 
bulk of the population. It numbered probably about twenty-live 
million souls. The order was divided into two chief classes: 
namely, the bourgeoisie, or middle class, and the peasantry. 

The middle class, which was comparatively small in numbers, 
was made up of the well-to-do and wealthy merchants, traders, 
lawyers, and other professional men. It constituted the most intel- 
ligent portion of the French nation. It was from this class that 
came most of the leaders of the revolutionary movement during 
its earlier stages. 

The peasants constituted the majority of the Third Estate. 
Though virtually all the French peasantry had long since been 
emancipated from the personal servitude of mediaeval serfdom, 
and very many had become the owners of the land they tilled, 
still the majority of them owed to some feudal lord tolls on the 
roads and ferries and dues at the market-place. Furthermore, 
they must grind their grain at the lord's mill, press their grapes 
at his winepress, and bake their bread at his oven, paying for 
the use of mill, press, and oven a heavy toll. In early feudal 
times these things were intended for the advantage of the serf, 
but now they had become oppressive monopolies and instruments 
of extortion. 



§500] THE COMMONS 44i 

Especially vexatious were the old feudal regulations to which 
the peasants were subjected in the cultivation of the soil. Thus 
they were forbidden to fence their fields for the protection of 
their crops, as the fences interfered with the lord's progress in the 
hunt;^ they were not allowed to frighten away the game which 
fed upon their vegetables; and they were even prohibited from 
cultivating their fields at certain seasons, as this disturbed the 
nesting partridges. Moreover, they must at all times calmly, en- 
dure the sight of the lord's hunting party — men, horses, and 
hounds— sweeping through their crops, and be thankful that they 
themselves were not the object of the hunt. 

Being kept in a state of abject poverty, a failure of his crops 
reduced the peasant to absolute starvation. It was not an un- 
usual thing to find women and children dead in the woods or 
along the roadways. The words addressed by Fenelon to Louis XIV 
in 1693 might with almost equal truth have been addressed 
to Louis XVI: "Your people are dying of hunger," he said; 
"instead of money being wrenched from these poor creatures, 
clothes and food should be given them. France is simply a large 
hospital, full of woe and empty of food." 

Another who saw all this misery thus pictures the appearance 
of the peasantry: "One sees certain fierce animals, male and 
female, scattered through the fields; they are black, livid, and 
burned by the sun, and attached to the soil, which they dig up 
and stir with indomitable industry; they have what is like an 
articulate voice, and when they rise up on their feet they show a 
human face, — in truth they are human beings. They retire at 
night into dens, where they live on black bread and water and 
roots; they save other men the trouble of sowing and delving 
and harvesting, and hence deserve not to lack of this bread 
which they have sown."- 

1 A considerable portion of the country was included in great hunting preserves. 
"The forest around Chantilly, belonging to the Prince of Conde," writes the English 
traveler Arthur Young, " is immense, spreading far and wide : the Paris road crosses it 
for ten miles, which is its least extent. They say the captahierie is above one hundred 
miles in extent ; that is to say, all the inhabitants for that extent are pestered with game, 
without permission to destroy it, in order to give one man diversion." 

- La Bruyfere, Lcs Caractercs, " De I'Homme," § cxxviii. 



442 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§501 

It is true that during the eighteenth century the condition of 
perhaps the majority of the French peasants had been much 
improved, and that on the eve of the Revolution their state was 
much more tolerable than that of the peasantry in the countries 
of central and eastern Europe. The number of peasant proprie- 
tors had become large and was steadily increasing, and in many 
districts at least was greater than at any earlier period. Yet 
never had a more rebellious spirit stirred in the French peas- 
antry than at just this time. And the reason of this was not 
because the system under which they lived was ''more severe, 
but more odious" than ever before, — more odious because the 
peasant of 1789, being more intelligent, realized more keenly the 
wrongs he suffered and knew better his rights as a man than 
did the ignorant, stolid peasant of the previous century. So 
true is it, as Hegel affirms, that Revolution is impossible without 
Renaissance.^ 

501. The Revolutionary Spirit of French Philosophy; 
Representative Authors. French philosophy in the eighteenth 
century was bold, skeptical, and revolutionary. Its dominant note 
was one of passionate protest against the inecjualities of the 
existing system of society and government. The great writers 
— -Montesquieu, Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, and D'Alembert — 
represent its prevailing spirit and tendency.- 

1 The truth of this law underlying the historical development is shown in the ante- 
cedents of the English Revolution of the seventeenth century and of the American 
Revolution of the eighteenth. In neither case was it the actual burdens imposed by 
despotic authority which provoked rebellion. The real cause of revolt in each case was 
that general intelligence of the people which made even the slightest infringement of 
their rights seem intolerable. 

2 The fountain head of this freedom-loving and skeptical philosophy was in England. 
From the death of Louis XIV on to the commencement of the Revolution, England was 
a sort of Mecca for the literary and philosophical French world. Speaking of the results 
of this worship of the men of France at the English shrine, Buckle writes as follows : 
" Their determination to search for liberty in the place where alone it could be found, 
gave rise to that junction of the French and English intellects which, looking at the im- ' 
mense chain of its effects, is by far the most important fact in the history of the eight- 
eenth century" (Hisfoty nf Civilization in England, vol. i, chap. xii). Prominent among 
the English scientists and writers who most deeply influenced French science and phi- 
losophy were Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), John T^ocke (1632-1704), Lord .Shaftesbury 
(1671-1713), and Lord BoHngbroke (1678-1751). Much of Voltaire's work was largely 
a popularization of the .science of Newton and the philosophy of Locke, 



§ 501] THE SPIRIT OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY 



443 



Montesquieu (i 689-1 755) was a great admirer of English 
institutions. He had passed almost two years of his early life in 
England and had thus become imbued with English ideas and 
English love of constitutional government. His most important 
work was entitled The Spirit of Laws, a work which had a 
remarkable influence upon the enlightened despots of the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, and especially upon the French 
constitution-makers of the revolutionary period, who in their 
work adopted his fundamental principle that the three functions 
of government, namely, the ex- 
ecutive, the legislative, and the 
judicial, must be separate and 
independent, that is, in the hands 
of different sets of officials. 

Voltaire (1694-17 78) was the 
very impersonation of the tend- 
encies of his age. He gave ex- 
pression, forcible and striking, to 
what the people were vaguely 
thinking and feeling. In the use 
of satire and irony he never had 
a superior, if a peer. He has 
been well called " the magician of 
the art of writing." He had a 
most marvelous faculty of condensing thought; putting whole 
philosophies in an epigram, he supplied the French people with 
proverbs for a century. He loved justice, in Carlyle's phrase, as 
it should be loved. His aim was to do away with injustice, preju- 
dices, and superstitions, to establish equality, and to make jus- 
tice and reason dominant in human affairs. He disbelieved in 
revealed religion;^ he would have men follow simply their inner 
sense of what is right and reasonable. His influence upon Fred- 
erick the Great of Prussia and upon other reforming kings and 
ministers was very great. In truth his writings stirred all Europe 

3 By some of Voltaire's disciples his doctrines were developed into atheism ; but 
Voltaire hirnself was a deist, combating alike 9theism and Christianity. 




P'lG. 84. Voltaire. (From a 
statue by Hoiidoii) 



444 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



[§ 501 






as well as all France and did so much to prepare the minds and 
hearts of men for the Revolution and to determine its course 
that in one sense there was much truth in his declaration, "I have 
accomplished more in my day than either Luther or Calvin." 

Rousseau (171 2-1 778), like Voltaire, had neither faith nor 
hope in existing institutions. Society and government seemed 
to him contrivances designed by the strong for the enslavement 
of the weak: "Man was born free and is everywhere in chains" 

is the burden of his complaint. 
Consequently he would do away 
with all these things. He would 
have men give up their artificial, 
complex life in society and return 
to the simplicity of what he called 
"a state of nature." He idealized 
the life of savages and declared 
that untutored tribes were hap- 
pier than civilized men. He drew 
such an idyllic picture of the life 
of man in a state of nature that 
Voltaire, after reading his treatise 
thereon, wrote him that it iilled him 
with a longing to go on all fours. 
Rousseau's greatest work was 
entitled The Social Contract. 
The State, according to him, is a voluntary association or brother- 
hood of equals. From this followed the sovereignty of the people 
and the abolition of inequality and class oppression. The writings 
of Rousseau had an extraordinary influence upon liberal-minded 
and generous souls everywhere. The framers of the American 
Declaration of Rights drew from his works many of their ideas 
and even phrases. The aid which France extended to the Amer- 
ican colonists in the War of Independence, in so far as that aid 
was prompted by a generous enthusiasm for republican ideals, was 
a direct outcome of the teachings of Rousseau. The idealists 
and dreamers of the French Revolution were wholly under the 




Fig. 85. Jean Jacques 

RoUSSEAtT 



§502] EFFECTS OF FRENCH PHILOSOPHY 445 

spell cast upon the world by the "New Gospel of Humanity" 
preached so fervently by the author of The Social Contract. 
Diderot (1713-1784) and D'Alembert (1717-1783) were the 
chief of the so-called Encyclopedists, the compilers of an im- 
mense work in twenty-eight volumes. The purpose of this pro- 
digious compilation was to gather up and systematize all the facts 
in science and history in possession of the world, in order that 
this knowledge might be made the basis of a philosophy of life 
and of the universe which should supersede all the old systems of 
thought and belief resting simply on authority. 

502. The Effects of this Philosophy. The tendency and ef- 
fect of this skeptical philosophy was to create hatred and contempt 
for the institutions of both State and Church and to foster dis- 
content with the established order of things. 

Nor was it difficult for the theoretical revolutionists to secure 
the ear of a people proverbially impulsive and imaginative, and 
suffering to the point of desperation from the unequal and oppres- 
sive arrangements of a wholly artificial society. The grand ideas 
of the proposed crusade for the recovery of the rights of man 
could not fail of appealing powerfully to that imaginative genius 
of the French people which had led them to be foremost in the 
romantic expeditions for the recovery of the Holy Sepulcher. 

This daring, skeptical, revolutionary philosophy, having once 
taken possession of the minds of the French people, was bound, 
sooner or later, to find expression in their acts. " Human thought," 
says Lamartine, "is like the Divine Mind: it makes everything 
in its own image." We shall soon see this philosophy making 
history, and making it like unto itself. 

503. Influence of the American Revolution. Not one of the 
least potent of the proximate causes of the French Revolution was 
the successful establishment of the American republic. "The 
American Revolution has laid the foundation of another in France, 
if the government does not take care of itself," wrote Arthur 
Young just on the eve of the outbreak in France. "Without the 
successful termination of the American War of Independence," 
writes Professor H. Morse Stephens, "it may be doubted whether 



446 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§504 

the French Revolution would have developed as it did, or whether 
it would have taken place at all." The French people sympathized 
deeply with the English colonists in their struggle for independ- 
ence. Many of the nobility, like Lafayette, offered to the patriots 
the service of their swords ; and the popular feeling, combined 
with a revengeful wish to see the British Empire dismembered, 
finally led the French government to extend to them openly the 
aid of the armies of France. 

The final triumph of the cause of liberty awakened scarcely 
less enthusiasm and rejoicing in France than in America. The 
republican simplicity of the newborn state, contrasting so strongly 
with the extravagance and artificiality of the court at Versailles, 
elicited the unbounded admiration of the French people. In this 
young republic of the Western world they saw realized the Arcadia 
of their philosophy. It was no longer a dream. They themselves 
had helped to make it real. Here the rights of man had been 
recovered and vindicated. And now this liberty which the French 
people had helped the American colonists to secure, they were 
impatient to see France herself enjoy. 

504. End of the Reign of Louis XV; "After us the Deluge." 
The long-gathering tempest is now ready to break over France. 
Louis XV died in 1774. In the early part of his reign his subjects 
had affectionately called him ''the Well Beloved," but long before 
he laid down his scepter all their early love and admiration had 
been turned into hatred and contempt. Besides being overbear- 
ing and despotic, the king was indolent and scandalously profli- 
gate. During twenty years of his reign, as we have already 
learned, he was wholly under the influence of the notorious 
Madame de Pompadour (sect. 411). 

The inevitable issue of this orgy of folly and extravagance 
seems to have been clearly enough perceived by the chief actors 
in it, as is shown by that heedless phrase attributed to the king 
and his favorite, — "After us the deluge." And after them the 
deluge, indeed, did come. The near thunders of the approach- 
ing tempest could already be heard when Louis XV lay 
down to die. 



§505] THE ACCESSION OF LOUIS XVI 447 

505. The Accession of Louis XVI (1774) ; Financial 
Troubles ; the Meeting of the Notables (i787). Louis XV left 
the tottering throne to his grandson, Louis XVI, then only twenty 
years of age. He had recently been married to the beautiful and 
light-hearted Archduchess Marie Antoinette of Austria. The first 
act of the young couple, upon learning that the burdens of sov- 
ereignty had descended upon their shoulders, was, it was rumored, 
to cast themselves upon their knees with the prayer, "O God! 
guide and protect us; we are too young to govern! " Well, indeed, 
might they appeal to Heaven; there was no earthly help. 

How to raise money was the urgent and anxious question with 
the government. France was on the verge of bankruptcy. The 
king called to his side successively Turgot, Necker, and other 
eminent statesmen as his ministers of finance, but their policies 
and remedies availed little or nothing. The traditions of the 
court, the rigidity of long-established customs, and the heartless 
selfishness of the privileged classes rendered reform in taxation 
and efficient retrenchment impossible. The national debt grew 
constantly larger. The people charged all to the extravagance of 
the queen, whom they called "Madame Deficit." 

In 1787 the king summoned the Notables, a body composed 
chiefly of great lords and prelates, who had not been called to 
advise with the king since the year 1626. But miserable coun- 
selors were they all. Refusing to give up any of their feudal privi- 
leges, or to tax the property of their own orders that the enormous 
public burdens which were crushing the commons might be light- 
ened, their coming together resulted in nothing. 

506. The Calling of the States-General; the Elections; the 
Cahiers. As a last resort it was resolved to summon the united 
wisdom of the nation, to call together the States-General, the 
almost-forgotten national assembly, composed of representatives 
of the three estates, — the nobility, the clergy, and the commons. 

In December, 1788, the king by proclamation called upon the 
French people to elect deputies to this body, which had not met 
to deliberate upon the affairs of France for a period of one hun- 
dred and seventy-five years. Divine-right royalty had seen no 



448 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§507 

necessity hitherto of seeking counsel of the people. The summon- 
ing of the ancient assembly was an acknowledgment that absolute 
monarchy had failed in France. How complete and irremediable 
that failure was, was recognized by no one as yet. 

In connection with the elections there had been made by the 
king's advisers a momentous decision, one which practically in- 
volved the fate of the monarchy. The commons, conscious that 
they formed the overwhelming majority of the nation, insisted 
upon being allowed double representation, that is, as many 
deputies as both the other orders. The minister, Necker, yielded 
to this demand. They were authorized to send up six hundred 
deputies, while the nobility and the clergy were each to have 
only three hundred representatives. 

The electors had been instructed to draw up statements of 
grievances and suggestions of reform for the information and 
guidance of the States-General. Very many of these documents, 
which are known as cahiers, were substantially copies of models 
drawn up by lawyers and others and widely distributed; never- 
theless they form a valuable record of the France of 1789, — of 
the grievances of the people, of their ideas of reform, and of their 
aspirations. One demand common to them all is that the nation 
through its representatives shall have part in the government. 
Those of the Third Estate call for the abolition of feudal rents 
and services and for the equalization among the orders of the 
burdens of taxation. In a word, they were petitions for equality 
and justice. 

507. The States-General changed into the National As- 
sembly. On the fifth of May, 1789, a memorable date, the dep- 
uties to the States-General met at Versailles. Thither the eyes 
of the nation were now turned in hope and expectancy. Surely if 
the redemption of France could be worked out by human wisdom, 
it would now be effected. 

At the very outset a dispute arose between the privileged orders 
and the commons respecting the manner of voting. It had been 
the ancient custom of the body for each order to deliberate in 
its own hall, and for the vote upon all questions to be by 



§ 507] THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY 449 

orders/ But the commons now demanded that this old custom 
should be ignored and that the voting should be by individuals ; for 
should the vote be taken by orders, then their double representa- 
tion would be a mere mockery, and the clergy and nobility by com- 
bining could always outvote them. For five weeks the quarrel kept 
everything in a deadlock. 

Finally, the commons, emboldened by the tone of public opinion 
without, took a decisive, revolutionary step. They declared them- 
selves the National Assembly, and then invited the other two 
orders to join them in their deliberations, giving them to under- 
stand that if they did not choose to do so they should proceed to 
the consideration of public affairs without them. 

King, nobles, and prelates were alarmed at the bold attitude 
assumed by the commons. The king, in helpless alarm, suspended 
the sitting of the rebellious deputies and guarded the door of 
their hall. But the commons, gathering in the tennis court, a 
great barnlike building without seats, bound themselves by oath 
not to separate until they had framed a constitution for France. 
This act was very much like that of the members of the Long 
Parliament, who practically opened the English Revolution by 
resolving that they should not be dissolved without their own 
consent (sect. 420). 

Shut out from the tennis court, the representatives of the Third 
Estate met in one of the churches of Versailles. Here they were 
joined by two of the nobility and a large number of the deputies 
of the clergy. It looked as though the three orders would soon 
coalesce. The court party labored to prevent this. A royal sitting, 
or joint meeting of the three estates, was held. The king, influ- 
enced by his advisers, read a speech in which, assuming the tone 
of an English Stuart, he admonished the commons not to attack 
the privileges of the other orders, and then commanded the depu- 
ties of the three orders to retire to their separate halls. The clergy 
and the nobility obeyed. The commons kept their seats. 

1 That is to say, the majority of the representatives of each order decided the vote 
for that order, and then two of these majority votes registered the decision of the whole 
body of deputies. 



450 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§508 

At this juncture the master of ceremonies somewhat pertly 
said to them, "You heard the king's command?" Thereupon 
Mirabeau, one of the leaders of the commons, a man of "Jupiter- 
like" mien and tone, turned upon the messenger with these 
memorable words: "Go, tell those who sent you that we are here 
by the command of the people, and here we shall stay until 
driven out at the point of the bayonet." The poor official "was 
so frightened at the terrible Mirabeau that he straightway sought 
the door, withdrawing from the assembly, however, backwards, as 
he had been wont to do in retiring fro'm the presence of the king. 
His instincts were right. He was, indeed, in the presence of the 
sovereign, — the newborn sovereign of France. 

The triumph of the Third Estate was soon complete. Real- 
izing that it was futile and dangerous longer to oppose the will of 
the commons, the king ordered those of the nobles and clergy 
who had not yet joined them to do so, and they obeyed. The 
States-General thus became in reality the National Assembly. 

This union of the three estates in the National Assembly was 
merely the registering of the result of the silent revolution which 
through the preceding centuries had been gradually transforming 
the France of feudal times, made up of the three orders of the 
clergy, nobility, and Third Estate, into the France of 1789, made 
up not of orders but of individuals, — of individuals who were 
already potentially citizens free and equal before the law. 

II. THE NATIONAL, OR CONSTITUENT, ASSEMBLY 
(JUNE 17, 1789-SEPTEMBER 30, 1791) 

508. Prominent Men in the Assembly. Lamartine declares 
that the National Assembly was " the most imposing body of men 
that ever represented not only France but the human race." 
It was impressive not so much from the ability or genius of its 
individual members, though the picked men of France were here 
gathered, as through the tremendous interests it held in its hands. 
Yet there were in the Assembly a number of men whose names 
cannot be passed in silence. 



§508] NOTABLE MEMBERS OF THE ASSfeMBLY 451 



Among the nobility was the patriotic, generous-minded La- 
fayette, who had won the admiration of his countrymen by 
splendid services rendered the struggling Republic in the New 
World. His influence at this time was probably greater than 
that of any other man in France. 

Belonging by birth to the same order, but sitting now as a 
deputy of the commons, was Mirabeau, a large-headed, dissolute, 
unscrupulous man, an impetuous orator, the mouthpiece of the 
Revolution. But though violent in speech he was moderate in 
counsel. He wanted to right the 
wrongs of the people, yet without 
undermining the throne. He wanted 
reform but not revolution. A man of 
great self-confidence, he aspired to 
be a leader, but no one at first had 
confidence in him, such had been 
his past life. Arthur Young said 
of him, ^'His character is a dead 
weight upon him." Yet, notwith- 
standing his lack of private virtues, 
Mirabeau's qualities of leadership at 
length gained for him recognition, 
and he was at one time president of 
the National Assembly. But his life 
of dissipation had undermined his 
constitution. He died in 1791, despairing of the future for France. 

Also among the deputies of the Third Estate sat another man 
whom _we must notice, — Robespierre, not much known as yet, 
but of whom we shall hear enough by and by. 

Still another most eminent representative of the commons was 
Abbe Sieyes, a person of wonderful facility in framing constitu- 
tions. France will have much need of such talent, as we shall see. 
Sieyes had recently stirred the whole country by a remarkable 
pamphlet entitled What is the Third Estate? {Qu'est-ce que le 
Tiers ttat?). He answers, "Everything!" ''What has it been 
hitherto?" "Nothing!" "What does it wish?" "To be something." 




Fig. 86. Mirabeau. (After a 
painting by L. Massard) 



452 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§509 

509. Origin of the Revolutionary Commune of Paris; the 
National Guards. During all these weeks the capital was in a 
seething ferment. The municipal authorities showing themselves 
irresolute and timid, the leading men of the different sections 
or wards of the city ousted them and then, forming themselves 
into a sort of provisional city council, assumed the government 
of the capital. Thus in this moment of tumult and confusion was 
born the revolutionary Commune of Paris, a body whose power 
came to overshadow that of the National Assembly itself. 

Under the direction of the self-constituted Commune the in- 
habitants of the capital now formed themselves into a sort of 
police force. Other cities throughout France imitated Paris and 
organized their militia. These hastily recruited popular bodies took 
the name of National Guards, and under that title were destined 
to act a most conspicuous part in the scenes of the Revolution. 

510. Storming of the Bastille (July 14, 1789). Thus all Paris 
was ready to burst into conflagration. The news of the dismissal 
by the king of Necker, a minister in whom the people had great 
confidence, kindled the inflammable mass. On the morning of 
July 14 a great mob assaulted the Bastille, the old state prison 
and, in the eyes of the people, the emblem of royal despotism. 
In a few hours the fortress was in the hands of the people. 
The governor and others of the defenders of the place were 
murdered, their heads placed at the end of pikes, and thus borne 
through the streets. The walls of the hated old prison were razed 
to the ground, and the people danced on the spot. The key of the 
dungeon was sent by Lafayette to Washington " as a trophy of the 
spoils of despotism." In a letter accompanying the gift, Lafayette 
wrote: " That the principles of America opened the Bastille is not 
to be doubted, and therefore the key goes to the right place." ^ 

The destruction of the Bastille by the Paris mob was the death 
knell not only of Bourbon despotism in France but of royal 
tyranny everywhere. The intelligence of the event was received 
with rejoicing in America and wherever the ideas and principles 
of self-government were entertained. When the news reached 

1 The rusty relic may be seen to-day in a case at Mount Vernon. 



§ 511] THE ABOLITION OF PRIVILEGES 453 

England the great statesman Fox, perceiving its signiiicance for 
liberty, exclaimed, "How much is this the greatest event that 
ever happened in the world, and how much the best!" 

Louis XVI regarded the matter with different feelings. When 
news of the affair was carried to him at Versailles he exclaimed, 
"What, RebelUonV "No, sire," was the response; "it is Revo- 
lution." The great French Revolution had indeed begun. 

511. The Abolition of Privileges (August 4, 1789). As the 
news of the storming of the Bastille spread through France the 
peasantry in many districts, following the example set them by 
the capital, destroyed the local bastilles and sacked and burned 
the castles of the nobles. The main object of the peasants was to 
destroy the title deeds in the archives of the manor houses, since 
it was by virtue of these charters that the lords exercised so many 
rights over the lands of the peasants and exacted so many teasing 
and iniquitous tolls and dues. This terrorism caused the begin- 
ning of what is known as the emigration of the nobles, that is, 
their flight beyond the frontiers of France. 

The storm without hastened matters within the National Assem- 
bly at Versailles. The privileged orders now realized that, to save 
themselves from the fury of the masses, they must give up those 
vexatious feudal privileges which were a main cause of the suf- 
ferings and the anger of the people. Rising in the tribune, two 
young and liberal-minded members of the nobility represented 
that they were willing to renounce all their feudal rights and ex- 
emptions. A contagious enthusiasm was awakened by this act 
of patriotic generosity. The impulsiveness of the Gallic heart was 
never better illustrated. Everybody wanted to make sacrifices 
for the common good. The nobles and the clergy, crowding to the 
tribune, strove with one another in generous rivalry to see who 
should make the greatest sacrifices in the surrender of rents, 
tolls, fees, and feudal dues.^ Thus in a single night much of the 
rubbish of the broken-down feudal system was cleared away. 

1 Tolls and dues were the lord's rights over roads, ferries, bridges, markets, as well 
as over grinding grain, pressing grapes, and baking bread (cf. sect. 91). These were 
abolished without compensation. In lieu of other annoying feudal dues, specified pay- 
ments by the peasants were substituted. 



454 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§512 

512. The Declaration of the Rights of Man (August 26, 
1789). After the abolition of the feudal system the next work of 
the National Assembly was the drawing up of a Declaration of 
the Rights of Man. This was in imitation of what had been 
done by the American patriots. 

The dominant notes of the Declaration were (i) the equality 
of men, — ''Men are born and remain free and equal"; (2) the 
sovereignty of the people, — "All sovereignty resides essentially in 
the nation"; (3) the impartial nature of law, — "Law is the 
expression of the general will ... and should be the same 
for all"; and (4) the inviolability of personal hberty, — "No 
person shall be arrested or imprisoned save according to the 
forms of law." 

513. Nationalization of Church Property (November 2, 
1789); the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (July 12, 1790). 
Shortly after the promulgation of the Declaration of Rights a 
Parisian mob fetched the king from Versailles to the capital. 
Their purpose in this was to hold him as a sort of hostage for the 
good conduct of the nobles and the foreign sovereigns while the 
new constitution was being prepared by the Assembly. 

For two years following this there was a comparative lull in the 
storm of the Revolution. The king was kept a close prisoner in 
the Tuileries. The National Assembly was making sweeping re- 
forms in both State and Church and busying itself in framing 
a new constitution. One of the most important of its measures 
and one far-reaching in its effects was the confiscation of the 
property of the Church, — a proceeding similar to that of the Prot- 
estant reformers of the sixteenth century in Germany and Eng- 
land.^ Altogether property, consisting largely of lands, worth 
it is estimated over a billion francs, was by decree made the 
property of the nation.- 

1 See sects. 299, 337. 

2 It being found impossible to sell at once and at fair prices so large an amount of 
real estate, the Assembly, using the nationalized lands as security, issued against them 
currency notes, called assignais. As almost always happens in such cases, inflation of 
the currency resulted. Fresh issues of notes were made until they became quite worth- 
less, as in the case of the Continental notes issued by the Continental Congress in the 
American War of Independence. 



§514] ARREST OF THE KING 455 

The nationalization of the property of the Church rendered it 
necessary that the nation should make some provision for the 
support of the clergy. This was done a little later by a decree 
known as the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, which pro- 
vided for the support of all ministers of religion by reason- 
able salaries paid by the nation. All the clergy, bishops, 
and parish priests alike were to be chosen by election, and 
all were to be required to take oath to support the new 
constitution. 

Naturally this conversion of the Church in France into a State 
Church created a schism in the nation. Out of a hundred and 
thirty-four bishops only four would take the prescribed oath. 
From this time on a large section of the French clergy became 
the bitter enemies of the Revolution. 

514. Flight and Arrest of the King (June 20, 1791). The 
attempt of the king to make his way out of France and join the 
emigrant nobles now gave an entirely new turn to the course of 
the Revolution. Under cover of night the royal family in dis- 
guise escaped from the Tuileries, and by post conveyance fled 
towards the frontier. When just a few hours more would have 
placed the fugitives in safety among friends, the Bourbon features 
of the king betrayed him, and the entire party was arrested and 
carried back to Paris. 

The attempted flight of the royal family was a fatal blow to the 
monarchy. It deepened the growing distrust of the king. Many 
affected to regard it as equivalent on his part to an act of abdica- 
tion. The people began to talk of a republic. The word was only 
whispered as yet; but it was not long before those who did not 
shout vociferously, ^'Vive la Rcpubliquel" were hurried to the 
guillotine. 

515. The Clubs: Jacobins and Cordeliers. In order to render 
intelligible the further course of the Revolution we must now 
speak of two clubs, or organizations, which came into prominence 
about this time, and which were destined to become more power- 
ful than the Assembly itself, and to be the chief instruments in 
inaugurating the Reign of Terror. These were the societies of the 



456 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§516 

Jacobins and the Cordeliers.' The objects of these clubs were to 
watch for conspiracies of the Royalists and by constant agitation 
to keep alive the flame of the Revolution. 

516. The New Constitution. The work of the National As- 
sembly was now drawing to a close. On the 14th of September, 
1 79 1, the new constitution framed by the body, which instrument 
made the government of France a constitutional monarchy, was 
solemnly ratified by the king. The National Assembly, having 
sat over two years, then adjourned. The first scene in the drama 
of the French Revolution was ended. 

III. THE LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY (OCTOBER 1, 1791- 
SEPTEMBER 19, 1792) 

517. The Membership of the Assembly; the Constitu- 
tionalists and the Girondins. The new constitution provided for 
a national legislature to be called the Legislative Assembly. This 
body was made up of several groups or parties, of which we need 
here notice only the Constitutionalists and the Girondins. The 
Constitutionalists, as their name implies, supported the new con- 
stitution, being in favor of a limited monarchy. The Girondins, 
so called from the department (the Gironde) whence their most 
noted leaders came, wanted to establish in France a federal 
republic like that just set up in the New World. 

518. The Temper of the Assembly. Some seemingly trivial 
matters will serve to illustrate the spirit of the new Assembly. 
At the very outset the members were much perplexed in regard 
to how they should address the king and "wound neither the 
national dignity nor the royal dignity." Some were for using the 
titles Sire and Majesty, against which others indignantly protested, 
declaring that "the law and the people are the only Majesty." 
It was finally decided that Louis XVI should be called simply 
King of the French. 

1 The Jacobins were so called from an old convent in Paris in which their first meet- 
ings were held ; the Cordeliers were named after a Franciscan convent where they 
assembled. The Cordeliers formed only a single Parisian club ; the Jacobins, however, 
organized numerous branch societies scattered throughout France. 



§519] WAR WITH THE OLD MONARCHIES 457 

Another thing which troubled the republican members was the 
gilded throne in which the king was wont to sit when he visited 
the Assembly. It was resolved that this article should be removed 
and an ordinary chair substituted for it, this to be placed in exact 
line with that occupied by the president of the Assembly. 

Again there were objections raised to the ceremony of the 
members rising and standing uncovered in the king's presence. 
So it was decreed that the members might sit before royalty 
with their hats on. 

519. Beginning of War with Old Monarchies (April 20, 
1792). The kings of Europe were watching with the utmost 
concern the course of events in France. They regarded the 
cause of Louis XVI as their own. If the French people should 
be allowed to overturn the throne of their hereditary sovereign, 
who any longer would have respect for the divine right of kings? 

The warlike preparations of Austria — which had entered into 
an offensive and defensive alliance with Prussia — awakened the 
apprehensions of the Revolutionists and led the Legislative As- 
sembly to declare war against that power. A little later the 
allied armies of the Austrians and Prussians crossed the frontiers 
of France. Thus was taken the first step in a series of wars 
which were destined to last nearly a quarter of a century, and in 
which France almost single-handed was to struggle against the 
leagued powers of Europe and to illustrate the miracles possible 
to enthusiasm and genius. 

520. The Massacre of the Swiss Guards (August 10, 1792). 
The allies at first gained easy victories over the ill-disciplined 
forces of the Legislative Assembly, and the Duke of Brunswick, 
commander of the Prussian army, advanced rapidly upon Paris. 
An insolent proclamation which this general now issued, wherein 
he ordered the French nation to submit to their king, and 
threatened the Parisians with the destruction of their city should 
any harm be done the royal family, drove the French people 
frantic with indignation and rage. 

The first outbreak of the popular fury occurred in Paris. The 
mob of the capital was swollen by the arrival of bands of picked 



458 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



[§520 



men from other parts of France. From the south came the "six 
hundred Marseillais who knew how to die." They brought with 
them "a better contingent than ten thousand pikemen," — the 
Marseillaise Hymn, the martial song of the Revolution.^ 

On the morning of the loth of August the hordes of the city 
were mustered. The Palace of the Tuileries, defended by several 
hundred Swiss soldiers, the remnant of the royal guard, was 




P"iG. 87. The Lion of Lucerne.- (From a photograph) 

assaulted. The royal family fled for safety to the hall of the 
Assembly close by. A terrible struggle followed in the corridors 
and upon the grand stairways of the palace. The Swiss stood 
"steadfast as the granite of their Alps." But they were over- 
whelmed at last, and all were killed, either in the building itself 
or in the surrounding courts and streets.- 

1 This famous war song was composed in t7<)2 by Roiiget de Lisle, a young French 
engineer. 

2 The number of Swiss guards slain was over seven hundred. Their fidehty and 
devotion are commemorated by one of the most impressive monuments in Europe, the 
so-called " Lion of Lucerne," at Lucerne in Switzerland. In a large recess in a cliff a 
dying lion, pierced by a lance, protects with its paw the Bourbon lilies. The wonderfully 
lifelike figure is cut out of the natural rock. The designer of the memorial was the 
celebrated Danish sculptor Thorvaldsen, 



§ 521] THE MASSAORE OF SEPTEMBER 459 

521. The Massacre of September ("Jail Delivery"). The 
army of the allies hurried on towards the capital to avenge the 
slaughter of the royal guards and to rescue the king, Paris was all 
excitement. "We must stop the enemy," cried Danton, "by 
striking terror into the Royalists." To this end the most atrocious 
measures were now adopted. It was resolved that the Royalists 
confined in the jails of the capital should be killed. A hundred 
or more men acted as executioners, and to them the prisoners 
were handed over after a hasty examination before self-appointed 
judges. The number of victims of this terrible " September Mas- 
sacre," as it is called, is estimated at from eight hundred to 
fourteen hundred,^ Europe had never before known such a "jail 
delivery." It was the greatest crime of the French Revolution. 

522. Defeat of the Allies at Valmy (1792). Meanwhile, in 
the open field, the fortunes of war inclined to the side of the 
Revolutionists. The French army in the north was successful 
in checking the advance of the allies, and finally at Valmy suc- 
ceeded in inflicting upon them a decisive defeat, which caused 
their hasty retreat beyond the frontiers of France. The day of 
this victory the Legislative Assembly came to an end, and the 
same day the National Convention assembled. 

IV. THE NATIONAL CONVENTION (SEPTEMBER 20, 1792- 
OCTOBER 26, 1795) 

523. Parties in the Convention. The Convention, consisting 
of seven hundred and forty-nine deputies, among whom was the 
celebrated freethinker Thomas Paine, embraced two active groups, 
the Girondins and the Mountainists, the latter being so named 
from the circumstance that they sat on the upper benches in the 
Assembly hall. There were no monarchists; all were republicans. 
No one now dared to speak of a monarchy. 

It was the Mountainists who were to shape the measures of the 
Convention. Their leaders were Danton and Robespierre, deputies 

1 Former estimates are now known to have been exaggerated. See Stephens, Ifis/oiy 
of the French Revolution^ vol, ii, p. 146, 



46o THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§524 

of Paris. The party was inferior in numbers to that of the Giron- 
dins, but was superior in energy and daring, and was, moreover, 
backed by the Parisian mob. Its leaders wanted a strong govern- 
ment, which they believed should be maintained, if necessary, by 
a system of terror. 

524. The Establishment of the Republic (September 21, 
1792) ; Beginning of the Revolutionary Propaganda. Almost 
the first act of the Convention was to abolish the monarchy. The 
motion for the abolition of royalty was not even discussed. "What 
need is there for discussion," exclaimed a delegate, "where all are 
agreed? Courts are the hotbed of crime, the focus of corruption; 
the history of kings is the martyrology of nations." 

All titles of nobility were also abolished. Every one was to be 
addressed simply as citizen. In the debates of the Convention the 
king was alluded to as Citizen Capet, and on the street the shoe- 
black was called Citizen Shoeblack. 

The day following the establishment of the Republic (Septem- 
ber 2 2, 1792) was made the beginning of a new era, the first day 
of the Year I. That was to be regarded as the natal day of 
Liberty. A little later, incited by the success of the French armies, 
the Convention called upon all nations to rise against despotism, and 
pledged the aid of France to any people wishing to secure freedom. 

This call to the peoples of Europe to rise against their kings 
and to set up republican governments converted the revolutionary 
movement in France into a propaganda, and naturally made more 
implacable than ever the hatred toward the Revolution felt by all 
lovers and beneficiaries of the old order of things. The declara- 
tion was a main cause of the fresh coalition formed against the 
new Republic and of the war of 1793. 

525. Trial and Execution of the King (January 21, 1793). 
The next work of the Convention was the trial and execution of 
the king. He was brought before the bar of that body, charged 
with having conspired with the enemies of France, of having 
opposed the will of the people, and of having caused the massacre 
of the loth of August. The sentence of the Convention was im- 
mediate death. On January 21, 1793, the unfortunate monarch, 



§ 526] COALITION AGAINST FRANCE 461 

after a last sad interview with his wife and children, was con- 
ducted to the scaffold. As his head fell beneath the knife of the 
guillotine, a great shout, ''Vive la RepubliqueV burst from the 
surrounding multitudes and echoed through the empty halls of 
the neighboring palace of the Tuileries. 

526. Coalition against France; the Counter-Revolution in 
La Vendee. The regicide, together with the propaganda decree 
of the preceding year, awakened among all the old monarchies of 
Europe the most bitter hostility against the French Revolutionists. 
The act was interpreted as a threat against all kings. A grand 
coalition, embracing England, Austria, Prussia, the Protestant 
Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Sardinia, Tuscany, Naples, and the 
Holy Roman Empire, was formed to crush the republican move- 
ment. Armies aggregating more than a quarter of a million men 
threatened France at once on every frontier. 

While thus beset with foes without, the Republic was threat- 
ened with even more dangerous enemies within. The people of 
La Vendee, in western France, where the peasants were angered 
at the conscription decrees of the Convention, and where there 
was still a strong sentiment of loyalty to the Church and the 
monarchy, rose in revolt against the Revolutionists. 

527. Creation of the Revolutionary Tribunal (March 10, 
1793) and of the Committee of Public Safety (April 6, 1793). 
The defeat of the French armies in the north and the advance of 
the allies caused the greatest excitement among the Parisian popu- 
lace, who now demanded that the Convention should overawe 
the domestic enemies of the Revolution by the establishment 
of a judicial dictatorship, a sort of tribunal which should take 
cognizance of all crimes against the Republic. 

Danton, while acknowledging the injustice that the summary 
processes of such a court might do to many unjustly suspected, 
justified its establishment by arguing that in time of peace society 
lets the guilty escape rather than harm the innocent; but in 
times of public danger it should rather strike down the innocent 
than allow the guilty to escape. It was on this principle that 
France was to be governed for one terrible year. 



462 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION L§ 528 

A little later was organized what was called the Committee of 
Public Safety, consisting of nine persons, members of the Con- 
vention. It was invested with dictatorial authority. The vast 
powers wielded by the committee were delegated to it for a single 
month only, but were renewed from month to month. 

We must bear in mind the character of these two bodies in 
order to follow intelligently the subsequent events of the Revo- 
lution and to understand how the atrocious tyranny of the Reign 
of Terror was exercised and maintained. 

528. The Fall of the Girondins (June 2, 1793). Still gloomier 
tidings came from every quarter, — news of reverses to the armies 
of the Republic in face of the allies, and of successes of the 
counter-revolutionists in La Vendee. The Mountainists in the 
Convention urged the most extreme measures. They proposed 
that the carriages of the wealthy should be seized and used for 
carrying soldiers to the front, and that the expenses of the govern- 
ment should be met by forced contributions from the rich. 

The Girondins opposed these measures. The Parisian mob 
filled the city with cries of "Down with the Girondins!" "If 
the persons of the people's representative be violated," warningly 
exclaimed one of the Girondin orators, "Paris will be destroyed, 
and soon the stranger will be compelled to inquire on which bank 
of the Seine the city stood." 

The Girondins were finally overborne. An immense mob sur- 
rounded the hall of the Convention and demanded that their 
chiefs be given up as enemies of the Republic. Thirty-one of 
their leaders were surrendered and placed under arrest, a pre- 
liminary step to the speedy execution of many of them during 
the opening days of the Reign of Terror. Thus did the Parisian 
mob purge the National Convention of France, as the army 
purged Parliament in the English Revolution (sect. 426). 

529. Charlotte Corday; Assassination of Marat (July 13, 
1793). The arrest of the Girondin chiefs marked a turning point 
in the Revolution. Several escaped and attempted to stir up re- 
volt in the provinces against the revolutionary leaders in Paris. 
Civil war was impending. 



§ 530] GREAT COMMITTEE OF PUBLIC SAFETY 463 

At this juncture a maiden of Caen, in Normandy, Charlotte 
Corday by name, conceived the idea of delivering France from 
the terrors of proscription and civil war by going to Paris and 
killing Marat, whom she regarded as the leader of the Moun- 
tainists. On pretense of wishing to reveal to him something of 
importance, she gained admission to his rooms and stabbed him 
fatally. She atoned for the act under the knife of the guillotine. 

The Reign of Terror (September, 1793-JuLY, 1794) 

530. The Great Committee of Public Safety; its Principle 
of Government. The perilous situation created by domestic in- 
surrection and foreign invasion demanded a strong executive. It 
was created. The Convention reorganized the Committee of Pub- 
lic Safety, which now became what is known as the Great Com- 
mittee of Public Safety, suspended the constitution, and invested 
the new board with supreme executive authority. For almost a 
full year the twelve men — of whom Robespierre was the most 
conspicuous — constituting this body exercise'd absolute power 
over the life and property of every person in France. The Com- 
mittee's principle of government was simple. It governed by 
terror. Its rule is known as the " Reign of Terror." 

In order to understand in any measure this passage of French 
history, we must put ourselves at the viewpoint of the Terrorists, 
as those responsible for the Terror are called. The most, if not 
all, of the men constituting the Great Committee were men of 
character, — some of their agents were unworthy creatures, who, 
misusing their authority, committed incredible crimes, — men gov- 
erned by certain principles and ideals which seemed to them 
right and worthy. They were men who had persuaded themselves 
that opposition to the Revolution was a crime deserving death, 
and that France could be saved from anarchy and foreign sub- 
jection only by the quick and thorough suppression of all oppo- 
sition at home by the terrifying executions of the guillotine. For 
the same reasons the majority of the people of France acquiesced 
in this government by terror which the Committee established. 



464 



THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



[§ 531 



531. The Execution of Marie Antoinette (October 16, 1793). 

One of the earhest victims of the guillotine under the organized 
Terror was the queen. The attention of the Revolutionists had 
been turned anew to the remaining members of the royal family 
by reason of the recognition by the allies of the Dauphin as king 
of France ^ and by the recent alarming successes of their armies. 
The queen, who had now borne nine months' imprisonment, 
was brought before the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal and con- 
demned to the guillotine. She was 
conveyed in a common cart to the 
same spot where, less than a year 
before, her husband had suffered. 
When she first appeared in the 
chamber of the dread tribunal, with 
her robes disordered, her hair 
blanched from anguish, and her face 
furrowed with sorrow, — so changed 
from that fair vision of beauty once 
the center of the brilliant court of 
Versailles,'- — a wave of pity had 
rushed over the hearts of all be- 
holders; but the rising tide of senti- 
ment had been checked, and now a 
hideous mob of men and women 
howled with savage delight around the cart which bore the 
unhappy queen to the scaffold. 

We need not speak of the faults of Marie Antoinette, though 
they were many; her patience, her heroism, and her sufferings 
were ample atonement for them all. 

1 The Dauphin, a mere child of eight years, was recognized as king of France by 
several of the great powers in January, 1793. He was at this time a prisoner in the 
Temple. He died in 1795, ^^^ death having been caused or at least hastened by the 
brutal ill usage he received at the hands of his jailers. 

2 It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then the 
Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed 
to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and 
cheering the elevated sphere she just had begun to move in, — glittering like the morn- 
ing star, full of life and splendor and joy. — Burke, Reficctions on the French Revolution, 




Fk;. 88. The (Guillotine 



§532] EXECUTION OF THE GIRONDINS 465 

532. Execution of the Girondins (October 31, 1793) and of 
Madame Roland (November 8, 1793). The guillotine was now 
fed daily with the best blood of France. Two weeks after the 
execution of the queen twenty of the chiefs of the Girondins, who 
had been kept in confinement since their arrest in the Convention, 
were pushed beneath the knife. Hundreds of others followed. 

Most illustrious of all the victims after the queen was Madame 
Roland, who was accused of being the friend of the Girondins. 
An incident at the scaffold is related as a memorial of her. As 
she was about to lay her head beneath the knife, her eye, it is 
said, chanced to fall upon the statue of Liberty which stood near 
the scaffold. "O Liberty!" she exclaimed; "what crimes are 
committed in thy name!" 

It has ever been so. The worst crimes that stain the pages 
of history have been committed in the name of that which is 
holiest, — in the name of Liberty, or of Justice, or of Religion. 

533. The New Calendar. While the Revolutionary Tribunal 
was clearing out of the way the enemies of the Republic by the 
quick processes of the guillotine, the Convention was busy re- 
forming the ancient institutions and customs of the land. They 
hated these as having been established by kings and aristocrats to 
enhance their own importance and to enslave the masses. They 
proposed to sweep these things all aside and give the world a 
fresh start. 

A new uniform system of weights and measures, known as the 
metric,^ had already been planned by the National Assembly; 
a new mode of reckoning time was now introduced. The months 
were given new names, names expressive of the character of each. 
Each month was divided into three periods of ten days each, 
called decades, and each day into ten parts. The tenth day of 
each decade took the place of the old Sabbath. The five odd 
days not provided for in the arrangement were made festival days. 

534. Attempt to abolish Christianity (November 7, 1793). 
The old calendar having been abolished, the Revolutionists next 

1 This reform was a most admirable one and must be regarded as one of the good 
outcomes of the Revohition. 



466 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§535 

proceeded to abolish Christianity. Some of the chiefs of the Com- 
mune of Paris declared that the Revolution should not rest until 
it had "dethroned the King of Heaven as well as the kings of 
earth." An attempt was made by the extremists to have Chris- 
tianity abolished by a decree of the National Convention, but 
that body prudently resolved that all matters of creeds should be 
left to the decision of the people themselves. The atheistic lead- 
ers then determined to effect their purpose through the Church 
itself. They persuaded the Bishop of Paris, Gobel by name, to 
abdicate his office, and his example was followed by many of the 
clergy throughout the country. 

The churches of Paris and of other cities were now closed, and 
the treasures of their altars and shrines confiscated to the State. 
Even the bells were melted down into cannon. The images of 
the Virgin and of the Christ were torn down, and the busts of 
Marat and other patriots set up in their stead. And as the eman- 
cipation of the world was now to be wrought not by the Cross 
but by the guillotine, that instrument took the place of the cru- 
cifix, and was called the "Holy Guillotine." In many places 
all visible symbols of the ancient religion were destroyed; all 
emblems of hope in some cemeteries were obliterated, and over 
their gates were inscribed the words, "Death is eternal sleep." 

535. Inauguration of the Worship of Reason (November 10, 
1793). The madness of the people culminated in the worship 
of Reason. A celebrated beauty, personating the Goddess of 
Reason, was set upon the altar of Notre Dame in Paris as an 
object of homage and worship. The example of Paris was fol- 
lowed generally throughout France. Churches were converted into 
temples of the new worship. The Sabbath having been abolished, 
the services of the temple were held only upon every tenth 
day. On that day the mayor or some popular leader mounted 
the altar and harangued the people, dwelling upon the news of 
the moment, the triumphs of the armies of the Republic, the 
glorious achievements of the Revolution, and the privilege of 
living in an era when one was oppressed neither by kings on 
earth nor by a King in Heaven, 



§536J 



FALL OF HUBERT AND DANTON 



467 



536. Fall of Hebert and Danton (March and April, 1794). 
During the progress of events the Jacobins had become divided 
into three factions, headed respectively by Danton, Robespierre, 
and Hebert. To make his own power supreme, Robespierre re- 
solved to crush the other two leaders. Hebert and his party were 
the iirst to fall, Danton and his adherents working with Robes- 
pierre to bring about their ruin. Danton and his party were 
the next to follow. The last words of Danton to the executioner 
were, " Show my head to the people ; they 
do not see the like every day." The grim 
request was granted. 

Robespierre was now supreme. His 
ambition was attained. '' He stood alone 
on the awful eminence of the Holy Moun- 
tain." But his turn was soon to come. 

537. Worship of the Supreme Being, 
One of the first acts of Robespierre after 
he had freed himself from his most virulent 
enemies was to give France a new religion 
in place of the worship of Reason. Robes- 
pierre wished to sweep away Christianity as 
a superstition, but he would stop at deism. 
He did not believe that a state could be 
founded on atheism. "If God did not 
exist," he declared, "it would behoove man to invent Him." 

In a remarkable address delivered before the Convention on 
the 7th of May, 1794, Robespierre eloquently defended the doc- 
trines of God and immortality, and then closed his speech by 
offering for adoption this decree: " (i) The French people recog- 
nize the existence of the Supreme Being and the immortality of 
the soul; (2) they recognize that the worship most worthy of 
the Supreme Being is the practice of the duties of man; and 
(3) they put in the first rank of these duties to detest bad faith 
and tyranny, to punish tyrants and traitors, to rescue the unfortu- 
nate, to defend the oppressed, to do to others all the good one can, 
and to be unjust towards none." The Convention adopted the 




Fig. 89. Robespierre 
(From a French print) 



468 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§538 

resolution with the "utmost enthusiasm." The churches which 
had been converted into temples of the Goddess of Reason were 
now consecrated to the new worship of the Supreme Being. 

538. The Culmination of the Terror at Paris (June and 
July, 1794). At the same time that Robespierre was instituting 
the new worship, the Great Committee of Public Safety, of which 
he was generally regarded as the controlling spirit, was ruling 
France by a terrorism unparalleled since the most frightful days at 
Rome. The prisons of Paris and of the departments were filled 
with suspected persons, until two hundred thousand prisoners were 
crowded into these republican bastilles. At Paris the dungeons 
were emptied of their victims and room made for fresh ones by 
the swift processes of the Revolutionary Tribunal, which in mock- 
ery of justice caused the prisoners to be brought before its bar 
in companies of ten or fifty or more. Rank or talent was an 
inexpiable crime. "Were you not a noble?" asked the president 
of the tribunal of one of the accused. "Yes," was the reply. 
"Enough; another!" was the judge's verdict. And so on through 
the long list each day brought before the court. 

The scenes about the guillotine seem mirrored from the In- 
ferno of Dante. Benches were arranged around the scaffold and 
rented to spectators, like seats in a theater. The market women 
of Paris, who were known as "the Furies of the Guillotine," 
busied themselves with their knitting while watching the changing 
scenes of the bloody spectacle. In the space of seven weeks 
(June lo-July 27) the number of persons guillotined in Paris was 
thirteen hundred and seventy-six, — an average of over twenty- 
eight a day. 

539. The Terror in the Provinces. While such was the fright- 
ful state of things at the capital, matters were even worse in 
several of the provinces. Some of the cities which had been 
prominent centers of the counter-revolution were made a terrible 
example of the vengeance of the Revolutionists. At Nantes the 
terror culminated. The agent here of the Great Committee was 
one Carrier. At first he caused his victims to be shot singly or 
to be guillotined; but finding these methods too slow, he devised 



§ 540] THE FALL OF ROBESPIERRE 469 

more expeditious modes of execution, which were known as 
fusillades (battues) and noyades (drownings). The fusillades 
consisted in gathering the victims in large companies and then 
mowing them down with cannon and musket. In the noyades a 
hundred or more persons were crowded into an old hulk, which 
was then towed out into the Loire and scuttled. 

By these various methods Carrier succeeded in destroying up- 
wards of five thousand persons in about four months. What 
renders these murders the more atrocious is the fact that a con- 
siderable number of the victims were women and little children. 

540. The Fall of Robespierre (July 28, 1794) ; Punishment 
of the Terrorists. The Reign of Terror had lasted about nine 
months when a reaction came. The successes of the armies of 
the Republic and the establishment of the authority of the Con- 
vention throughout the departments caused the people to look 
upon the wholesale executions that were daily taking place as 
unnecessary and cruel. They began to turn with horror and pity 
from the scenes of the guillotine. Robespierre was the first to 
be swept away by the reaction. The Convention denounced him 
and his adherents as enemies of the Republic. He was arrested, 
rescued by the rabble of Paris, rearrested and straightway sent 
to the guillotine, and along with him several of his friends and 
the greater part af the members of the Commune of Paris. 

The reaction which had swept away Robespierre and his asso- 
ciates continued after their fall. There was a general demand 
for the punishment of the Terrorists. The clubs of the Jacobins 
were closed, and that infamous society which had rallied and 
directed the hideous rabbles of the great cities was broken up. 
The Christian worship was reestablished. 

54L Effects of the Reign of Terror. The effect of the Terror 
upon France was just what the Terrorists had aimed to produce. 
It effectually cowed all opposition to the Revolution at home, 
thereby preserving the unity of France and enabling her to push 
the foreign foe from her soil. 

Outside of France the effects of the rule by terror were most 
unfavorable to the true cause of the Revolutionists. It destroyed 



470 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§542 

the illusions of generous souls, like Coleridge, Wordsworth, and 
Southey in England, and caused among the earlier sympathizers 
with the Revolutionists a great revulsion of feeling. From being 
Liberals men became Conservatives and determined foes of all 
innovation and reform. The Revolution was discredited in the 
eyes of its best friends. It became identified in men's minds with 
atheism and terrorism, and to the present hour in the minds of 
many the French Revolution suggests nothing save foul blas- 
phemies and guillotine horrors. 

542. Bonaparte defends the Convention (October 5, 1795). 
Experience had shown the defects of the revolutionary govern- 
ment, particularly in that it united both legislative and executive 
power in the same hands. The Convention now set about fram- 
ing a new constitution, which vested the executive power in a 
body called the Directory, consisting of five persons. It also pro- 
vided for two legislative bodies, known as the Council of Five 
Hundred and the Council of Ancients. 

Certain features of the new constitution displeased the Parisian 
mob. The sections of the turbulent capital again gathered their 
hordes, and on the 5th of October, 1795, a mob of forty thousand 
men advanced to the attack of the Tuileries, where the Conven- 
tion was sitting. As the mob came on they were met by a "whiff 
of grapeshot," which sent them flying back in wild disorder. The 
man who trained the guns was a young artillery officer, a native 
of the island of Corsica, — Napoleon Bonaparte. The Revolu- 
tion had at last brought forth a man of genius capable of con- 
trolling and directing its tremendous energies. 

V. THE DIRECTORY (OCTOBER 27, 1795-NOVEMBER 9, 1799) 

543. The Republic becomes Aggressive. Under the Directory 
the Republic, which up to this time had been acting mainly on 
the defensive, very soon entered upon an aggressive policy. The 
Revolution having accomplished its work in France, having there 
put an end to despotism and class privilege, now set itself about 
fulfilling its early promise of giving liberty to all peoples (sect. 524). 



§544J PLANS OF THE DIRECTORY 471 

Had not the minds and hearts of the people in all the neigh- 
boring countries been prepared to welcome the new order of 
things, the Revolution could never have spread itself as widely as 
it did. But everywhere irrepressible longings for equality and 
freedom, born of long oppression, were stirring the souls of men. 
The French armies were everywhere welcomed by the people 
as deliverers. Thus was France enabled to surround herself with 
a girdle of commonwealths. She conquered Europe not by her 
armies but by her ideas. "An invasion of armies," says Victor 
Hugo, "can be resisted: an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted." 

The republics established were, it is true, short-lived; for the 
times were not yet ripe for the complete triumph of democratic 
ideas. But a great gain for freedom was made. The reestablished 
monarchies, as we shall see later, never dared to make themselves 
as despotic as those which the Revolution had overturned. 

544. The Plans of the Directory. Austria and England were 
the only formidable powers that still persisted in their hostility 
to the Republic.^ The Directors resolved to strike a decisive 
blow at the first of these implacable foes. To carry out their 
design two large armies, numbering about seventy thousand 
each, were mustered upon the Middle Rhine and intrusted to 
the command of the two young and energetic generals, Moreau 
and Jourdan, who were to make a direct invasion of Germany. 
A third army, numbering about forty-two thousand men, was 
assembled in the neighborhood of Nice, in southeastern France, 
and placed in the hands of Bonaparte, to whom was assigned the 
work of driving the Austrians out of Italy. 

545. Bonaparte's Italian Campaign (1796-1797). Straight- 
way upon receiving his command, Bonaparte, now in his twenty- 
seventh year, animated by visions of military glory to be gathered 
on the fields of Italy, hastened to join his army at Nice. He 
at once aroused all the latent enthusiasm of the soldiers by one 
of those short, stirring addresses for which he afterwards became 
so famous. "Soldiers," said he, "you are badly fed and almost 

1 I'russia, Spain, and other states had made the Treaties of Basel with tlie Conven- 
tion, in which they recognized the French RepubHc (1795). 



472 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§546 

naked. ... I have come to lead you into the most fertile fields 
of the world; there you will find large cities, rich provinces, honor, 
glory, and wealth. Soldiers of Italy, will you fail in courage?" 

If this address be placed alongside the decree of the Conven- 
tion offering the aid of France to all peoples desiring freedom 
(sect. 524), it will be realized with how alien a spirit Bonaparte 
here inspires the armies of republican France. He represents 
Italy to the imagination of the soldiers of the French Republic 
merely as a country of rich cities to be despoiled, as a land 
whence France may draw unlimited tribute. The address marks 
the beginning of that transformation which in a few years changed 
the liberating armies of France into the scourge of Europe. 

Before the mountain roads were yet free from snow Bonaparte 
set in motion his army, which he had assembled on the coast 
near Genoa, and suddenly forced the passage of the mountains 
at the juncture of the Apennines and the Maritime Alps. The 
Carthaginian had been surpassed. "Hannibal," exclaimed Bona- 
parte, "crossed the Alps; as for us, we have turned them." 

Now followed a most astonishing series of French victories 
over the Austrians and their allies. As a result of the campaign 
a considerable part of northern Italy was formed into a common- 
wealth under the name of the Cisalpine Republic. Genoa was also 
transformed into the Ligurian Republic. 

546. Treaty of Campo Formic (October 17, 1767). While 
Bonaparte had been gaining his surprising victories in Italy, 
]\Ioreau and Jourdan had been meeting with severe reverses in 
Germany. Bonaparte, having effected the work assigned to the 
army of Italy, now climbed the Eastern Alps and marched toward 
Vienna. The near approach of the French to his capital induced 
the Emperor Francis II to listen to proposals of peace. An armi- 
stice was agreed upon, and later the important Treaty of Campo 
Formio was arranged. 

By the^terms of this treaty Austria ceded her Belgian prov- 
inces to the French Republic, receiving as an offset the Venetian 
dominions, save the Ionian Islands, which were annexed to the 
French Republic. Bonaparte was already dazzled by the vision of 



§547] BONAPARTE'S CAMPAIGN IN EGYPT 473 

a French empire in the Orient. The Grecian isles were to constitute 
a link in the chain which should bind France to her prospective 
Eastern dependencies. 

With the treaty arranged, Bonaparte soon set out for Paris, 
where was accorded him a triumph and ovation such as Europe 
had not seen since the days of the old Roman conquerors. 

547. Bonaparte's Campaign in Egypt (1798-1799). The Direc- 
tors had received Bonaparte with apparent enthusiasm; but at 
this very moment they were disquieted by fears lest their gen- 
eral's ambition might lead him to play the part of a second Caesar. 
They resolved to engage him in an enterprise which would take 
him out of France. This undertaking was an attack upon Eng- 
land, which they were then meditating. Bonaparte opposed the 
plan of a descent upon the island as impracticable, but proposed 
the conquest of Egypt. This would enable France to control the 
trade of the East and cut England off from her East India pos- 
sessions. The Directors assented to the plan, and with feelings of 
relief saw Bonaparte embark from the port of Toulon to carry 
out the enterprise. 

Evading the vigilance of the British fleet that was patrolling the 
Mediterranean, Bonaparte landed in Egypt. Within sight of the 
Pyramids the French army was checked in its march by a deter- 
mined stand of the renowned Mameluke cavalry. Bonaparte 
animated the spirits of his men for the inevitable fight by one of 
his happiest speeches. One of the sentences is memorable. " Sol- 
diers," he exclaimed, pointing to the Pyramids, " forty centuries 
are looking down upon you." The battle that followed is known 
in history as the "battle of the Pyramids." Bonaparte gained 
a victory that opened the way for his advance to Cairo. He had 
barely entered that city before the startling intelligence was 
borne to him that his fleet had been destroyed at the mouth of 
the Nile by the English admiral Nelson (August i, 1798). 

In the spring of 1799 the Ottoman Porte having sent a force 
to retake Egypt, Bonaparte led his army into Syria to fight 
the Turks there. He finally invested Acre. The Turks were 
assisted in the defense of this place by the distinguished English 



474 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION [§548 

commodore, Sir Sidney Smith. All Bonaparte's efforts to carry the 
place by storm were in vain. "I missed my destiny at Acre," 
said Bonaparte afterwards. With the ports of Syria secured he 
might have imitated Alexander and led his soldiers to the foot of 
the Himalayas. Bitterly disappointed, Bonaparte abandoned the 
siege of Acre and led his army back into Egypt. 

548. Establishment of the Tiberine, the Helvetic, and the 
Parthenopean Republics (1798-1799). We must turn now to 
view affairs in Europe. The year 1798 was a favorable one for 
the republican cause represented by the Revolution. During that 
year and the opening month of the following one the French 
set up three new republics. 

First, they incited an insurrection at Rome, made a prisoner 
of the Pope, and proclaimed the Roman or Tiberine Republic. 
Then, intervening in a revolution in Switzerland, they invaded 
the Swiss cantons and united them into a commonwealth under 
the name of the Helvetic Republic, A little later the French 
troops drove the king of Naples out of Italy to Sicily and trans- 
formed his peninsular domains into the Parthenopean Republic. 
Thus were three new republics added to the commonwealths 
which the Revolution had previously created. 

549. The Reaction; Bonaparte overthrows the Directory 
(18th and 19th Brumaire, 1799). Much of this work was 
quickly undone. Encouraged by the victory of Nelson over the 
French fleet in the battle of the Nile, and alarmed at the aggres- 
sions of the government of the Directory, the leading powers of 
Europe, now including the Tsar of Russia, who was incensed 
against the French especially for their intrusion into the Orient, 
which the Russian rulers had ever regarded as their own particular 
sphere of influence, had formed a new coalition against France. 

The war began early in 1799 and was waged at one and the 
same time in Italy, in Switzerland, and in Holland. In the south 
the campaign was extremely disastrous to the French. They were 
driven out of Italy and were barely able to keep the allies off 
the soil of France. The Cisalpine, Tiberine, and Parthenopean 
republics were abolished. 



§549] THE REACTION 475 

These reverses suffered by the French armies in Italy, though 
in other quarters they had been successful, caused the Direc- 
tory to fall into great disfavor. They were charged with having 
through jealousy exiled Bonaparte, the only man who could save 
the Republic. Confusion and division prevailed everywhere. 

News of the desperate state of affairs at home reached Bona- 
parte in Egypt, just after his return from Syria. He instantly 
formed a bold resolve. Confiding the command of the army in 
Egypt to Kleber, he set sail for France, disclosing his designs in 
the significant words, ''The reign of the lawyers is over." 

Bonaparte was welcomed in France with the wildest enthusi- 
asm. A great majority of the people felt instinctively that the 
emergency demanded a dictator. Some of the Directors joined 
with Napoleon in a plot to overthrow the government. Meeting 
with opposition in the Council of Five Hundred, Napoleon with 
a body of grenadiers drove the deputies from their chamber. 
. The French Revolution had at last brought forth its Cromwell. 
Napoleon was master of France. The first French Republic was 
at an end, and what is distinctively called the French Revolution 
was over. Now commences the history of the Consulate and the 
First Empire, — the story of that surprising career the sun of 
which rose so brightly at Austerlitz and set forever at Waterloo. 

Selections from the Sources. Young, Arthur, Travels in France (the 
most valuable contemporary account we have of the condition of France, 
particularly of the peasantry, on the eve of the Revolution). Burke, E., 
ReJleciio7is on the Revolution in France. Translations and Reprints, vol. i. No. 5, 
contains ( i ) " Decree of the National Assembly abolishing the Feudal System," 
(2) "Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen," and (3) "The Civil 
Constitution of the Clergy"; vol. iv. No. 5, "Typical Cahiers of 1789." 
Robinson, J. 11., Readings in European IPisto>y, vol. ii, chaps, xxxiv— xxxvi, 
and first part of chap, xxxvii. 

Secondary Works. For the antecedents and causes of the Revolution:' 
Taine, H. a., The Ancient Regime, and Tocqueville, Alexis de, The Old 
Regime and the Revolution. Buckle, H. T., History of Civilization in England, 
vol. i, chaps, xii-xiv (gives an unsurpassed presentation of the philosophical 
and literary movement of the eighteenth century). Lowell, E. J., The Eve 
of the Revohition (a series of scholarly and suggestive studies of the various 
phases of French life and thought during the century preceding the calling 
of the States-General). 



476 THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 

Short histories: Bourne, H. E., The Revolutionary Period in Europe, 
chaps, i-xvi ; Stephens, H. Morse, Revolutionary Europe, lySg-iSij, chaps, 
i-vi. Other excellent short accounts are Morris', Mallet's, Mathews', 
and Mignet's. 

Extended histories: Stephens, H. Morse, A ffistoryofike French Revolu- 
tion, 2 vols. ; Taine, H. A., The French Revolution, 3 vols. ; The Cambridge 
Modern Histo)y, vol. viii ; and C.\RLVLE, T., The F}-ench Revolution. (The last 
is another of Carlyle's masterpieces ; " a prose epic " and " pictures in the 
French Revolution " are good characterizations of it.) 

Biographies: MoRLEY, J., Rousseau, 2 vols., and Voltaire; WiLLERT, P. F., 
Mirabeau ; Lamartine, A., History of the Girondists, 3 vols.; Tarbell, I. M., 
Madame Roland. 

Topics for Class Reports. i.What the term Ancient Regime stands for: 
Seignobos, C, History of Contempora?y Civilization, pp. 92-106. 2. Life in 
Paris under the Reign of Terror : Stephens, H. M., Histor\' of the French 
Revolution, vol. ii, chap, x, pp. 343-361. 3. "The Reign of Terror as a political 
experiment " : Mathews, Shailer, The French Revolution, chap. xvi. 



CHAPTER XXXIV 

THE CONSULATE AND THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 

(1799-1815) 

I. THE CONSULATE (1799-1804) 

550. The Veiled Military Dictatorship. After the overthrow 
of the government of the Directory, a new constitution — the 
fourth since the year 1789 — was prepared and, having been sub- 
mitted to the approval of the people, was accepted by a vote of 
over three millions to less than two thousand. This new instru- 
ment vested the executive power in three Consuls, nominated for 
a term of ten years, the first of whom really exercised all the 
authority of the board, the remaining two members being simply 
his counselors. Bonaparte, of course, became the First Consul. 

The other functions of the government were carried on by a 
Council of State, a Tribunate, a Legislature, and a Senate. But 
the members of all these bodies were appointed either directly 
or indirectly by the Consuls, so that the entire government was 
actually in their hands, or rather in the hands of the First Con- 
sul. France was still called a republic, but republican names and 
forms merely veiled a government as absolute and personal as 
that of Louis XIV, — in a word, a military dictatorship. 

551. Wars of the First Consul. Bonaparte inherited from the 
Directory war with Austria and England. Offers of peace to both 
having been rejected, Bonaparte mustered his armies. His plan 
was to deal Austria, his only formidable continental enemy, a 
double blow. A large army was collected on the Rhine for an 
invasion of Germany. This was intrusted to Moreau. Another, 
intended to operate against the Austrians in Italy, was gathered 
with great secrecy at the foot of the Alps. Bonaparte himself 
assumed command of this latter force. 

477 



47^ THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§552 

In the spring of the year 1800 Bonaparte made his memo- 
rable passage of the Alps, and astonished the Austrian generals 
by suddenly appearing in Piedmont at the head of an army of 
forty thousand men. Upon the renowned field of Marengo the 
Austrian army, which greatly outnumbered that of the French, 
was completely overwhelmed, and North Italy lay for a second 
time at the feet of Bonaparte. The Cisalpine Republic was now 

reestablished. 

A few months after the 
battle of Marengo, Moreau 
gained at Hohenlinden a 
decisive victory over the 
Austrians, which opened 
the way to Vienna. The 
Emperor Francis II was 
now constrained to sign a 
treaty of peace at Lune- 
ville (1801). The most 
important part of the treaty 
was that which provided 
for the reconstruction of 
the Germanic body. But 

as this reorganization of 
Fig. qo. Napoleon Bonaparte. (After , , „ 

^, J ,,. , 7- 7 \ central Europe was not 

the meaalhon by Isabey) ^ 

completed until after the 
battle of Austerlitz, we shall defer explanation of it until we 
reach that important event (sect. 559). The year following the 
peace between France and Austria, England signed the Peace 
of Amiens. 

552. Bonaparte as an Enlightened Despot. Peace with Aus- 
tria and England left Bonaparte free to devote his amazing energies 
to the reform and improvement of the internal affairs of France. 
It was his work here which constitutes his true title to fame. He 
was, in the words of his biographer, Professor Sloane, " one of the 
greatest social reformers of the world." We shall best understand 
Bonaparte in his role as a reformer if we regard him as the 




§ 552J BONAPARTE AS AN ENLIGHTENED DESPOT 479 

successor of the Enlightened Despots of the eighteenth century. 
His mission was to carry on and perfect their work and to con- 
summate the reforms and to organize and make secure the social 
results of the Revolution. 

To close the wounds inflicted upon France by the Revolution 
was one of the first aims of Bonaparte. Already the Royalist 
exiles had been invited to return. Forty thousand families came 
back, and many of the old supporters of the Bourbons now 
entered the service of the First Consul. The prison doors were 
thrown open. The past was forgotten and forgiven. There were 
no longer to be parties; all were to be simply Frenchmen. These 
wise measures of amnesty did much towards restoring confidence 
and bringing back internal peace and prosperity to France. 

But the deepest wound given France by the Revolution was the 
schism created by the Civil Constitution of the Clergy (sect. 531). 
Th^s bad divided the nation into two bitterly opposed parties. 
Moreover, since 1794 the government had ceased to pay the 
salaries of the priests, with the result that many communes were 
wholly without regular religious services. To remedy this state 
of things Bonaparte entered into an agreement with the Holy See 
known as the Concordat (i8oi)-. The First Consul was to 
nominate archbishops and bishops impartially from both parties, 
that is, the party which had acquiesced in the revolutionary 
programme and the party which had opposed it, and the state was 
again to assume as a public charge the salaries of the clergy.^ 
The Pope was to be recognized as the head of the French Church 
and was to confirm in their ecclesiastical offices the persons 
nominated by the government. The Concordat closed the great 
breach which the Revolution had opened in the French Church, 
and attached the Catholics to the government of the First Consul, 
who was acclaimed as "the new Constantine." 

Not less successful was Bonaparte in his efforts to restore those 
material interests of the country which had suffered greatly 

1 The salaries of all the French clergy, including Protestant ministers and Jewish 
rabbis, were paid out of the public treasury. This arrangement held good down to the 
year 1905, when the Concordat was annulled with a complete separation of Church and 
State (sect. 593). 



48o THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§552 

during the Revolution. He repaired and constructed roads and 
bridges, dug canals, opened the rivers to navigation, and improved 
the seaports of the country. The great military roads which he 
caused to be constructed over the Alps are marvels of engineering 
skill, and served as a chief means of communication between 
Italy and the north of Europe until the mountains were pierced 
with tunnels. 

The public buildings and monuments of France had fallen 
into decay. Bonaparte restored the old and built new ones. 
He embellished Paris and the other chief cities of France with 
public edifices and memorial monuments of every description. 
Many of these works are the pride of France at the present day. 

Education was not neglected. By the establishment of schools 
and the endowment of libraries, museums, and art galleries, and 
by the creation finally of the University of France, Bonaparte 
gave an impulse to the educational system which is felt at the 
present time, and which has done much to secure for the French 
people the preeminent place they hold to-day in the world of art, 
science, and letters. It is to be borne in mind, however, that 
in this field the First Consul built upon foundations which had 
been laid by the Convention. 

But the most noteworthy, the most enduring, and the most 
far-reaching in its influence upon civilization of all the works 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, either as First Consul or as Emperor, 
was the compilation of what is known as the Civil Code, or Code 
Napoleon, which has caused his name to be joined with that of 
Justinian as one of the great lawgivers of history. 

The compiling of this Code was one of the earliest under- 
takings of the First Consul. Almost immediately after coming 
to power he appointed a commission of five eminent jurists to 
take up the work, which had already been begun by the Con- 
stituent Assembly and the Convention.^ These experts were 

1 It is now recognized that the Code was not so novel a thing as some writers have 
represented it as being. Code-making was a favorite work of the Enlightened Despots 
(for example, Catherine the Great of Russia, the Emperor Joseph II of Austria, Frederick 
the Great of Prussia, etc.). The Civil Code is almost an exact transcript of the Projet 
du code civil prepared by Cambacer^s for the Convention. 



§ 553] NAPOLEON BECOMES LIFE CONSUL 481 

busied with the labor for about four years (1800-1804). Bona- 
parte himself often met with them and assisted in the work by 
sagacious criticism and suggestion. 

The Code was made up of the ancient customs of France, of 
Roman law maxims, and particularly of the principles and the 
legislation of the Revolution. This great mass of material was 
condensed, harmonized, and revised in some such way as the 
jurists of the Emperor Justinian handled the accumulated mass 
of law material — old and new, pagan and Christian — of their 
time, in the creation of the celebrated Corpus Juris Civilis. 

The influence of the Civil Code upon the development of 
Liberalism in western Europe was most salutary. It secured 
the work of the Revolution. It swept away the old unequal, 
iniquitous, oppressive customs, regulations, decrees, and laws 
that were an inheritance from the feudal ages. It recognized 
the equality of noble and peasant in the eye of the law. Either 
its principles or its direct provisions were soon introduced into 
half of the countries of Europe. 

553. Bonaparte becomes Consul for Life (1802). Through 
the Senate and the Council of State, in which bodies the majority 
of the members were wholly subservient to Bonaparte, it was 
now proposed to the French people that he should be made Con- 
sul for life, in order that his magnificent projects of restoration 
and reform might be pursued without interruption. With almost 
a single voice the people approved the proposal. Thus did the 
First Consul move a step nearer the imperial throne. 

II. THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE; THE WAR OF 
LIBERATION (1804-1815) 

554. Napoleon proclaimed Emperor (1804). A conspiracy 
against the life of the First Consul and the increased activity of 
his enemies resulted in a movement to increase his power and to 
insure his safety and the stability of his government by placing 
him upon a throne. A decree of the Senate conferring upon 
him the title of Emperor of the French having been submitted to 



482 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 555 

the people for approval was ratified by an almost unanimous 
vote. The coronation took place in the cathedral of Notre Dame 
in Paris, December 2, 1804, Pope Pius VII having been induced 
to come from Rome to take part in the ceremonies. The Pope 
poured the holy oil upon the head of the kneeling Emperor and 
girded him with the imperial scepter; but when he would have 
placed the crown upon his head, Napoleon checked him and, 
taking the diadem from the Pope, crowned himself with his 
own hands.^ 

What portion of the spirit of the old divine-right monarchies 
entered into the new French Empire may be inferred from the 
doctrines which in less than a year after Napoleon's coronation 
the subservient French clergy were teaching the youth of France. 
"The Emperor is the minister and the power of God, and his 
image on earth," ran the new catechism; "to honor and serve 
him is to honor and serve God." 

555. The Republics created by the Revolution are changed 
into Kingdoms. The French Republic was now completely trans- 
formed into an unveiled Empire. Napoleon had taken up his 
residence in the palace of the Tuileries and was creating a court 
as much as possible like the old court of the Bourbons. 

The original Republic having been thus transformed, we may 
be sure that the cluster of republics which during the Revolution 
had been raised up around it will speedily undergo a like trans- 
formation. Within two years from the time that the French 
government assumed an imperial form, three of the surrounding 
republics raised up by the revolutionary ideas and armies of 
France had been transformed into states with monarchical govern- 
ments dependent upon the French Empire or had been incor- 
porated with France. In a word, all these states now became 
practically the fiefs of Napoleon's empire, the provinces and 
dependencies of a new Rome. 

Thus the Cisalpine or Italian Republic was changed into a 
kingdom, and Napoleon, crowning himself at Milan with the 

1 From this time on Bonaparte, imitating a royal custom, used only his first name, 
Napoleon, and it is by this name, which was destined to fill such a great place in history, 
that we shall hereafter know him. 



§ 556] THE EMPIRE AND THE OLD MONARCHIES 483 

"Iron Crown" of the Lombards/ assumed the government of the 
state, with the title of King of Italy (iMay, 1805). A little later 
in the same year the Emperor incorporated the Ligurian Republic 
with the French Empire. Then he remodeled the Batavian Re- 
public into the kingdom of Holland and conferred the crown 
upon his favorite brother, Louis. 

Thus was the political work of the Revolution undone. Political 
liberty was taken away. "I set it aside," said Napoleon, "when 
it obstructed my road." Civil equality was left. 

556. The Empire and the Old Monarchies. It will not be 
supposed that the powers of Europe were looking quietly on 
while France was thus transforming herself and all the neigh- 
boring countries. The colossal power which the soldier of for- 
tune was building up was a menace to all Europe. The Empire 
was more dreaded than the Republic, because it was a military 
despotism, and as such was an instrument of irresistible power 
in the hands of a man of such genius and resources as Napoleon. 
Coalition after coalition, of which England was "the paymaster," 
was formed by the sovereigns of Europe against the "usurper," 
with the object at first of pushing France back within her original 
boundaries and then later of deposing Napoleon as the disturber 
of the peace of Europe and the oppressor of the nations. 

From the coronation of Napoleon in 1804 until his final down- 
fall in 181 5 the tremendous struggle went on almost without 
intermission. It was the war of the giants. Europe was shaken 
from end to end with such armies as the world had not seen 
since the days of Xerxes. Napoleon, whose hands were upheld 
by a score of distinguished marshals, performed the miracles 
of genius. His brilliant achievements still dazzle, while they 
amaze, the world. 

To relate in detail Napoleon's campaigns from Austerlitz to 
Waterloo would require the space of volumes. We shall simply 
indicate in a few brief paragraphs the successive steps by which 
he mounted to the highest pitch of power and fame, and then 
trace hurriedly the decline and fall of his astonishing fortunes. 

1 Here again Napoleon imitated Charlemagne. He said, " T am Charlemagne, for like 
Charlemagne I unite the crowns of France and Loriibardy." Compare sect. "j^. 



484 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§557 

557. Napoleon's Preparations for invading England; the 
Sale of Louisiana to the United States; the Camp at Boulogne 
(1803-1805 ). Even before Napoleon's coronation war had been 
renewed between France and England. One of Napoleon's first 
acts of preparation for this struggle was the sale (in 1803) to the 
United States, for fifteen million dollars, of the territory of 
Louisiana, which he had recently acquired from Spain. He was 
impelled to do this because his inferiority at sea made it impos- 
sible for him to defend such remote possessions. 

The sale and transfer of this immense region of boundless 
resources was one of the most important transactions in history. 
Napoleon seems to have realized its significance for the develop- 
ment of the great American republic. "I have given England a 
rival," he said, "which sooner or later will humble her pride," 

As early as 1803 Napoleon had begun to mass a great army at 
Boulogne, on the English Channel, and to build an immense 
number of flat-bottomed boats preparatory to an invasion of 
England. ''Carthage must be destroyed" was the menacing and 
persistent cry of the French press. "Masters of the Channel for 
six hours," said Napoleon, "and we are masters of the world." 
To arouse patriotic enthusiasm by historic memories, he caused the 
Bayeux Tapestry,^ the famous memorial of the Norman conquest 
of England, to be brought to Paris. 

Napoleon's menacing preparations produced throughout Eng- 
land an alarm unequaled by anything the English people had expe- 
rienced since the days of the Spanish Armada. The younger Pitt, 
at this time head of the English government, was untiring in fos- 
tering a new coalition of the powers against France. Early in 
the year 1805 England and Russia formed an alliance which was 
intended to constitute the nucleus of a general European league. 
Austria and other states soon joined the coalition. 

558. Campaign against Austria : Austerlitz (December 2, 
1805). Intelligence reaching Napoleon that both the Austrian and 
the Russian armies were on the move, he suddenly broke up the 
camp at Boulogne, flung his Grand Army, as it was called, across 

1 See page 102, under " Selections from the Sources." 



§ 559] THE REORGANIZATION OF GERMANY 485 

the Rhine, outmaneuvered and captured a great Austrian army 
at Ulm, and then marched in triumph through Vienna to the field 
of Austerlitz beyond, where he gained one of his most memorable 
victories over the combined armies of Austria and Russia, number- 
ing more than eighty thousand men. Austria was now shorn of 
large tracts of her dominions, including Venetia, which Napoleon 
added to the kingdom of Italy. 

559. The Reorganization of Germany; the Confederation of 
the Rhine; End of the Holy Roman Empire (isoe). That 
reconstruction of the Germanic body which Napoleon had begun 
after the battles of Marengo and Hohenlinden (sect. 551) was 
now substantially completed, save as regards Prussia and Hanover. 
Napoleon's guiding principle here was to create in western Ger- 
many a small number of states which should be bound to himself 
by selfish interests and strong enough to be useful as allies 
and which should constitute barrier states between France on the 
one side and Austria and Prussia on the other. Both of these 
latter states were to be kept weak and dependent upon France. 

In pursuance of this plan Napoleon ultimately reduced the 
three hundred and more states comprising the Germanic system 
to about forty. It was the ecclesiastical states, the free imperial 
cities, and the petty states of the minor princes which were the 
chief sufferers, the lands of most of them being bestowed upon the 
princes of the states selected for survival. Among the rulers 
especially favored at this time were the Elector of Bavaria and 
the Duke of Wlirtemberg, both of whom were made kings and 
given enough territory to enable them to maintain becomingly this 
new dignity. The Margrave of Baden was also made a grand 
duke, and his dominions were enlarged. All these princes formed 
marriage alliances with the family of Napoleon. 

These favored states, together with others, — ^sixteen in all, — 
now declared themselves independent of the old Holy Roman 
Empire, and were formed into a league called the Confederation 
of the Rhine, with Napoleon as Protector.^ Emperor Francis II, 

1 The Confederation came ultimately to embrace thirty-seven states, with a population 
of about fifteen millions. 



486 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§560 

recognizing that his office was virtually abolished, now laid down 
the imperial crown and henceforth used as his highest title 
Francis I, Emperor of Austria} 

Thus did the Holy Roman Empire come to an end, after 
having maintained an existence, since its revival under Charle- 
magne, of almost exactly one thousand years. Reckoning from 
its establishment by Csesar Augustus, it had lasted over eighteen 
hundred years, thus being one of the longest-lived of human 
institutions, — if mere existence may be reckoned as life. 

560. Trafalgar (October 21, 1805). Napoleon's brilliant vic- 
tories in Germany were clouded by an irretrievable disaster 
to his fleet, which occurred on the day following the surrender 
of the Austrians at Ulm. Lord Nelson having met, near Cape 
Trafalgar on the coast of Spain, the combined French and 
Spanish fleets, — Spain was at this time Napoleon's ally, — almost 
completely destroyed the combined armaments. The gallant 
English admiral fell at the moment of victory. 

This decisive battle gave England the control of the sea and 
relieved her from all danger of a French invasion. Even the 
"wet ditch," as Napoleon was wont contemptuously to call the 
English Channel, was henceforth an impassable gulf to his ambi- 
tion. He might rule the Continent, but the sovereignty of the 
ocean and its islands was denied him. 

561. Campaign against Prussia: Jena and Auerstadt (isoe). 
Prussia was the next state after Austria to feel the weight of 
Napoleon's hand. King Frederick William III, following the dic- 
tates of selfish prudence, had thus far held aloof from the coali- 
tions against Napoleon and had profited greatly by such a policy. 
He had remained inactive while Austria was being beaten to the 
ground; but realizing at last the perfidious character of the man 
with whom he was dealing, and goaded by insufferable insult, he 
recklessly threw down the gauntlet to the victor of Austerlitz. 

Moving with unusual swiftness. Napoleon overwhelmed the 
Prussian armies in the battles of Jena and Auerstadt, which were 

1 He had already assumed this title in August, 1S04, just after Napoleon's coronation 
as Emperor. 



§ 562] CAMPAIGNS AGAINST THE RUSSIANS 487 

both fought on the same day. The greater part of Prussia was now 
quickly overrun by the French armies. The Prussian generals, 
at least some of them, exhibited the most incredible incapacity 
and cowardice. Strong fortresses were surrendered without a blow 
being struck in their defense. The capital, Berlin, was entered 
by the French in triumph. 

The sword of the great Frederick, the famous car of victory 
over the Brandenburg Gate at Berlin, together with many treas- 
ures stolen from the museums and art galleries of the city, were 
carried as trophies to Paris. 

562. Campaigns against the Russians: Eylau and Fried- 
land (1807). The Russian army, which the Tsar Alexander had 
sent to the aid of Frederick William, was still in the field against 
Napoleon in the Prussian territories east of the Vistula. 

Early in the year 1807 Napoleon attacked, on a stormy winter 
day, the Russian forces at Eylau. The battle was sanguinary and 
indecisive, each army, it is estimated, leaving over thirty thousand 
dead and wounded on the snow. During the summer campaign 
of the same year Napoleon again engaged the Russians in the 
terrible battle of Friedland and completely overwhelmed them. 
The Tsar was constrained to sue for peace. 

563. The Treaty of Tilsit (1807); the Partition of the 
World. Napoleon arranged a series of interviews with the Tsar 
Alexander at Tilsit. The first of the meetings took place on a 
raft moored mJdway in the Niemen, the frontier river of Russia. 

These interviews between Napoleon and Alexander mark one 
of the most dramatic situations in European history. The old 
order of things had been destroyed and a new order of things was 
being projected. The subject of converse of the two emperors 
was nothing less than the partition of the world between them. 
"Napoleon spread before the eyes of the Emperor of Russia his 
favorite conception of the reestablishment of the old empires of 
the East and the West. They were to be faithful allies. France 
was to be the supreme power over the Latin races and in the 
center of Europe; Russia was to represent the Greek Empire 
and to expand into Asia. These grandiose views charmed the 



488 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§563 

Emperor Alexander, who believed that in adopting them he was 
following out the policy of Peter the Great and of the Empress 
Catherine. The one enemy to be feared and crushed, according 
to Napoleon, was England."^ 

Thus the modern world was to be made over on the old Romano- 
Byzantine model. But there were difficulties in remaking the map 
of central Europe. Particularly in regard to the treatment and 
disposition of the old Polish territories and Prussia did the interests 
of the two emperors clash. It would have been to the advantage 
of Napoleon to restore the dismembered Polish nation, but he 
could not do this without alienating the Tsar Alexander; so he 
merely organized the greater part of Prussian Poland into v/hat 
he named the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, and bestowed it upon 
the vassal king of Saxony.- 

Thus were the hopes of the Polish patriots sacrificed upon the 
altar of Napoleon's imperial ambitions. Here was a nation of 
fifteen million souls which had been partitioned by brigand kings 
like a herd of cattle. The patriot Poles, who with pathetic devo- 
tion had followed Napoleon to every battlefield of the Consulate 
and the Empire, looked to him to unite and restore their nation. 
He had allowed them to hope that he would do so. Never were 
hopes more cruelly disappointed. Had Napoleon here acted the 
part of a real liberator, he would have undone ont of the greatest 
wrongs of which history knows, and in the gratitude of a redeemed 
and valiant nation would have raised for himself an enduring 
monument as one of the greatest benefactors of humanity. 

As to Prussia, Napoleon was minded to erase it from the map 
of Europe. The intercession of the Tsar Alexander, however, 
saved the state from total extinction.^ But neither the Tsar's medi- 
ation in behalf of his ally, Frederick William III, nor the per- 
sonal entreaties of the beautiful and patriotic Queen Louisa, who 
humiliated herself by appearing as a suppliant before Napoleon 

1 Stephens, Revolutionary Europe, 1789-1815, p. 240. 

2 Napoleon had made the Elector of Saxony a king just after the battle of Jena. 

3 Alexander wished to maintain Prussia as a barrier state between Russia and Napo- 
leon's empire. He viewed with apprehension the advance of Napoleon's frontier towards 
the western boundaiy of his ovifn domains. 



§ 564] THE CONTINENTAL BLOCKADE 489 

at Tilsit, availed to save the monarchy from dismemberment 
and the deepest abasement. Besides stripping Prussia of her 
Polish provinces Napoleon took away from her all her territories 
west of the Elbe, out of which, in connection with some other 
lands, he made the new kingdom of Westphalia and gave it to his 
brother Jerome. This kingdom, into the making of which went 
twenty-four principalities and free cities, Napoleon now added to 
the Confederation of the Rhine. Prussia thus lost fully one half 
of her territory. What was left became virtually a province of 
Napoleon's empire. 

564. The Continental Blockade; the Berlin and Milan 
Decrees (18O6-I807). After the Peace of Tilsit, England was 
Napoleon's sole remaining enemy. The means which he employed 
to compass the ruin of this formidable and obstinate foe, the pay- 
master of the coalitions which he was having constantly to face, 
affords the key to the history of the great years from 1807 to the 
final downfall of Napoleon at Waterloo in 181 5. These means 
were what is known as the Continental Blockade or System. We 
have seen how the destruction of Napoleon's fleet at Trafalgar 
dashed all his hopes of ever making a descent upon the British 
shores (sect. 560). Unable to reach his enemy directly with his 
arms, he resolved to strike her through her commerce. By two 
celebrated edicts, called from the cities whence they were issued 
the Berlin and Milan decrees, he closed all the ports of the Con- 
tinent against English ships and forbade any of the European 
nations from holding any intercourse with Great Britain. The 
policy thus adopted by Napoleon to bring England to terms by 
ruining her trade was a suicidal one and resulted finally in the 
ruin of his own empire. 

565. The English seize the Danish Fleet (September, 1807). 
Events of great moment, all connected directly with Napoleon's 
Continental Blockade, now tread closely one upon the heels of 
another. 

A part of the understanding between Napoleon and Alexander 
at Tilsit was that Napoleon should seize upon Denmark and Por- 
tugal and appropriate their fleets, in order that he might be able to 



490 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 566 

carry on more effectively his commercial war with Great Britain. 
In this contemplated action no regard was paid to the fact that 
both these countries were neutral states. 

The English ministers got information respecting this secret 
article of the Tilsit treaty. The situation in the North was already 
serious for the English. The Directory in taking possession of the 
Dutch Netherlands had got control of the Dutch trade. Napo- 
leon's campaign against Prussia had resulted in his getting actual 
or virtual possession of all the ports of North Germany. Should 
he now be allowed to seize Denmark he would be able to control 
absolutely the commerce of the Baltic Sea. 

The English government resolved to forestall Napoleon by 
seizing the Danish fleet. An English squadron descended upon 
the Danish capital, Copenhagen, and demanded of the astonished 
Danes the surrender of all their ships and naval stores. It was 
explained by the English officials that the fleet and stores would 
be held by England merely as a "deposit," and would be given 
back at the end of the war with France. 

The Danes indignantly refused to give up their ships. There- 
upon the English bombarded Copenhagen, destroying over eight- 
een hundred of the houses of the city, and quickly compelled 
compliance with their demand. The entire Danish fleet and all 
the naval stores which could be found were carried off by the 
English as war booty. The proceeding was admittedly a high- 
handed one, and probably England lost more by it than she 
gained; for it aroused against her a feeling of bitter indignation 
on the Continent and caused Denmark, hitherto neutral, to enter 
into a close alliance with Napoleon. 

566. Beginning of the Peninsular Wars (isos). One of the 
first results in the south of Europe of Napoleon's Continental 
Blockade was a conflict with Portugal. The prince regent of 
that country refusing to comply with all his demands respecting 
English trade and property. Napoleon sent one of his marshals to 
take possession of the kingdom. The entire royal family, accom- 
panied by many of the nobility, fled to Brazil. Portugal now 
became virtually a province of Napoleon's empire. 



§ 567] THE SPANISH UPRISING 491 

567. Napoleon places his Brother Joseph upon the Spanish 
Throne (isos) ; the Spanish Uprising. Spain was next appro- 
priated. Arrogantly interfering in the affairs of that country, — 
the government it must be said was desperately incompetent 
and corrupt, — Napoleon induced the weak-minded Bourbon king, 
Charles IV, to resign to him as "his dearly beloved friend and 
ally" his crown, which he at once bestowed upon his brother 
Joseph. The throne of Naples, which Joseph had been occupy- 
ing,^ was transferred to Murat, Napoleon's brother-in-law. Thus 
did this audacious man make and unmake kings and give away 
thrones and kingdoms. 

But the high-spirited Spaniards were not the people to submit 
tamely to such an indignity as Napoleon had inflicted upon them. 
The entire nation from the Pyrenees to the Strait of Gibraltar 
flew to arms. Portugal also rose, and England sent to her aid a 
force under Sir xArthur Wellesley, afterwards Duke of Wellington 
and the hero of Waterloo. The French armies were soon driven 
oiit of Portugal and pushed beyond the Ebro in Spain. Joseph 
fled in dismay from his throne before he had been seated upon it 
more than eight days. 

Napoleon, aside from his unfortunate expedition to Egypt, had 
never before met with such a check. The warning words of his 
brother Joseph, who had written him, "Your glory will suffer 
shipwreck in Spain," seemed to have found quick fulfillment. 
Napoleon realized that he must take the field himself if the 
prestige of the French arms was to be restored. 

568. The Congress of Erfurt (September-October, 1808). 
Before setting out on this enterprise, however, Napoleon deemed 
it politic to have an interview with the Tsar Alexander, in 
order to renew the friendship and cement afresh the alliance 
entered into between them at Tilsit, — for he was well aware that 
the Tsar was chafing under the workings of the Continental 
Blockade. 

The meeting took place at Erfurt. This celebrated Congress 
marks the culminating point of Napoleon's extraordinary career. 

1 Napoleon had dethroned the Bourbons in Naples in iSo6. 



492 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§569 

Europe probably had never seen anything in imperial magnifi- 
cence, in civil and military display, to equal this gathering. 
Napoleon on this occasion played host to four vassal kings, to 
scores of princes and ambassadors, and to the greatest poets and 
men of letters of the time. French actors, brought from Paris, 
presented night after night to "a parterre of kings" the master- 
pieces of the French stage. 

The obsequiousness of all, in particular of the petty German 
princes, to Napoleon is what most amazes us. The meeting 
between Napoleon and Goethe and Wieland possesses a painful 
interest. Both of the great poets seemed dazzled by the genius 
of the conqueror of Europe and bowed in homage at his feet. 
Goethe was flattered when Napoleon greeted him with the words, 
"You are a man"; and both accepted at his hands the cross of 
the Legion of Honor.^ 

Amidst festivals, parades, balls, and operas the m^ain purpose 
of the meeting was not forgotten by Napoleon. The Tilsit alli- 
ance between him and the Russian Emperor was renewed. In 
return for being allowed to absorb Finland — Alexander had at 
this time nearly completed the conquest of that province — and 
to appropriate the Danubian provinces of the Sultan, the Tsar 
was to keep Austria quiet while Napoleon was busy in Spain and 
was to enforce rigorously the blockade against England. 

569. Napoleon in Spain (November, 1808-January, 1809). 
From the Congress at Erfurt Napoleon hastened into Spain. At 
the head of an army of over a hundred thousand men he marched 
southward, entered Madrid in triumph, reseated his brother upon 
the Spanish thfone, and then told the Spaniards that if they did 
not respect Joseph he would put the crown on his own head and 
teach them what was becoming conduct in subjects. 

Napoleon now began the pursuit of a British army which under 
Sir John Moore had marched from Portugal into Spain. Threat- 
ening tidings from another quarter of Europe caused him to give 

1 Of course, in judging the conduct of the German princes and German men of 
letters at this Erfurt meeting, we should bear in mind how weak at this time the senti- 
ment of nationality among the Germans really was. For the attitude of Goethe and other 
German thinkers towards nationalism, see p. 497, n. 1. 



§ 570] NAPOLEON'S CAMPAIGN AGAINST AUSTRIA 493 

over the pursuit into the hands of one of his generals, the distin- 
guished Marshal Soult/ while he himself hastened back to Paris. 

570. Napoleon's Third Campaign against Austria (1809). 
Taking advantage of Napoleon's troubles in the Iberian penin- 
sula, Emperor Francis I of Austria had put his army on a war 
footing and made ready to throw down the gage of battle, — his 
hopes of regaining what had been lost apparently rendering him 
forgetful of Austerlitz. "The waters of Lethe and not the waters 
of the Danube," said Napoleon to a group of foreign ambassadors, 
"seem to wash the walls of Vienna." 

The war opened in the spring of 1809. At the end of a short 
campaign, the most noted engagements of which were the hard- 
fought battles of Aspern (Essling) and Wagram, Austria was 
again at Napoleon's feet. She was now still further dismembered. 
Among other lands taken from her was a long strip of shore land on 
the Adriatic, which, under the name of the Illyrian Provinces, Napo- 
leon added to the French Empire. He now had actual or virtual 
control of the whole of the European coast line from the frontier 
of Turkey on the Adriatic to the frontier of Russia on the Baltic. 

571. Union of the Papal States with Napoleon's Empire 
(1809). Napoleon's Continental System now brought him into 
trouble with the Papacy. Pope Pius VII refused to enforce the 
blockade against England and further presumed to disregard 
other commands of Napoleon. Thereupon Napoleon declared 
that the Pope "was no longer a secular prince" and took pos- 
session of his domains. Pope Pius straightway excommunicated 
the Emperor, who thereupon arrested him and for three years 
held him a state prisoner. 

Napoleon, further, removed the College of Cardinals to Paris. 
Thither he also transferred all the chief officers of the papal gov- 
ernment, together with the papal archives. Hundreds of wagon- 
loads of books and documents were dragged to the French capital. 

1 The retreat of Sir John Moore from the heart of Spain before a greatly superior 
French force is given a place, along with that of the Ten Thousand Greeks, among the 
memorable retreats in history. Moore was killed in the battle of Corunna (January i6, 
1809), on the northern coast of Spain, and the remnant of his army, which his skill and 
gallantry had saved, were taken on board the English fleet. 



494 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 572 

Napoleon's idea in all this was to get the entire machinery of 
the papal government under his hand. He had in mind to pre- 
side over the councils of the Church as Constantine and Charle- 
magne had done. After his fall he commented as follows upon 
this part of his plan for setting up a universal autocracy: ''Paris 
would have become the capital of Christendom, and I should 
have governed the religious as well as the political world." 

572. Napoleon's Second Marriage (isio). Soon after his 
triumph over the Emperor Francis, Napoleon divorced his wife 
Josephine in order to form a new alliance with the Archduchess 
]\Iarie Louise of Austria.^ Josephine bowed meekly to the will of 
her lord and went into sorrowful exile from his palace. Napoleon's 
object in this matter was to cover the reproach of his plebeian 
birth by an alliance with one of the ancient royal families of 
Europe and to secure the perpetuity of his government by leaving 
an heir to be the inheritor of his throne and fortunes. 

The desire and ambition of Napoleon to found a dynasty 
seemed realized when, the year following his marriage with the 
archduchess, a son was born to them, who was given the title of 
King of Rome. His enemies could now no longer, as he reproached 
them with doing, make appointments at his grave. He had now 
something more than "a life interest" in France. The succession 
was assured. 

573. Holland and North German Coast Lands annexed to 
Napoleon's Empire (isio). During this year of his second 
marriage Napoleon made two fresh territorial additions to his 
empire. 

Louis Bonaparte, — king of Holland, it will be recalled, — dis- 
approving of his brother's Continental System, which was ruining 
the trade of the Dutch, abdicated the crown. Thereupon Napo- 
leon incorporated Holland with the French Empire. 

A few months later Napoleon also annexed to his empire all 
the German coast land from Holland to Liibeck in order to be 

1 Josephine was divorced December 15, 1809; the marriage to Marie Louise took 
place April 2, iSio. Josephine retained her title of Empress and was assigned the palace 
of Malmaison as a residence, with a pension of two million francs a year. To the very 
last she and Napoleon were good friends. Her death occurred May 29, 1S14. 



§574] NAPOLEON'S EMPIRE 495 

able to close the important ports here, including the old Hanseatic 
cities of Bremen, Hamburg, and Liibeck, against English trade. 

574. Napoleon's Empire at its Greatest Extent (18I1). In 
these additions the Napoleonic empire received its last enlarge- 
ment. Napoleon was now, in outward seeming,^ at the height of 
his marvelous fortunes. Marengo, Austerlitz, Jena, Friedland, and 
Wagram were the successive steps by which he had mounted to 
the most dizzy heights of military power and glory. 

The empire which this soldier of fortune had built up stretched 
from Liibeck to beyond Rome, embracing France proper, the 
Netherlands, part of western and northwestern Germany, all 
western Italy as far south as the kingdom of Naples, together 
with the Illyrian Provinces and the Ionian Islands. 

On all sides were allied, vassal, or dependent states. Several 
of the ancient thrones of Europe were occupied by Napoleon's 
relatives or his favorite marshals. He himself was king of the 
kingdom of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, 
and Mediator of Switzerland. Austria and Prussia were com- 
pletely subject to his will. Russia and Denmark were his allies. 

Such were the relations of the once great powers and independ- 
ent states of Europe to "the Corsican adventurer." Not since 
the time of the Caesars had one man's will swayed so much of 
the civilized world. 

575. Elements of Weakness in the Empire. But, splendid and 
imposing as at this moment appeared the external affairs of 
Napoleon, the sun of his fortunes, which had risen so brightly at 
Austerlitz, had already passed its meridian. There were many 
things just now contributing to the weakness of his empire and fore- 
boding its speedy dissolution. Founded and upheld by his genius 
alone, its permanence depended solely upon his life and fortunes. 

Again, Napoleon's Continental System, through the suffering 
and loss it inflicted, particularly upon the maritime countries of 
Europe, had caused murmurs of discontent all around the cir- 
cumference of the Continent. 

1 It is probably true that the height of Napoleon's real power is marked by the Treaty 
of Tilsit (1S07). 



496 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§576 

Still again, the conscriptions of the Emperor had drained 
France of men, and her armies were now recruited by mere boys, 
who were utterly unfit to bear the burden and fatigue of Napo- 
leon's rapid campaigns. The heavy taxes, also, which were nec- 
essary to meet the expenses of Napoleon's wars and to carry on 
the splendid public works upon which he was constantly engaged, 
produced great suffering and discontent throughout the empire. 

Furthermore, Napoleon's harsh and unjust treatment of Pope 
Pius VII had alienated the Catholic clergy and created a resentful 
feeling among pious Catholics everywhere. 

At the same time the crowd of deposed princes and dispossessed 
aristocrats in those states which Napoleon had reconstructed, and 
in which he had set up the new code of equal rights, were natu- 
rally resentful, and were ever watching an opportunity to regain 
their lost power and privileges. 

Even the large class who at first welcomed Napoleon as the 
representative of the French ideas of equality and liberty, and ap- 
plauded while he overturned ancient thrones and stripped of their 
privileges ancient aristocracies, — even many of these early adher- 
ents had been turned into bitter enemies by his adoption of impe- 
rial manners and the formation of a court, and especially by his 
setting aside his first wife, Josephine, and forming a marriage 
alliance with one of the old hated royal houses of Europe. 

576. The New Force destined to destroy Napoleon's Em- 
pire: the Nations. But the active force which was to over- 
whelm Napoleon's empire and to free Europe from his tyranny 
was the sentiment of national patriotism which was being aroused 
in the dismembered and vassal states and in those whose inde- 
pendence was imperiled. Up to the time of his invasion of Spain, 
Napoleon had warred against the governments of Europe. Those 
governments he had been able to overturn easily because they 
were not based on the love and loyalty of their subjects. 

But now Napoleon, in his ambition to make himself master of 
all Europe, was contemptuously disregarding the claims of race 
and nationality. The Empire threatened to become the tomb of 
the Nations. In the face of this danger national patriotism was 



§ 577] THE REGENERATION OF PRUSSIA 497 

being everywhere awakened. We have witnessed the popular 
uprising in Spain; we shall now witness a similar movement in 
Germany and in Russia. 

577. The Regeneration of Prussia. It was in Prussia that 
this patriotic movement found most passionate expression. After 
the crushing defeat at Jena, Prussia, as we have seen, had been 
subjected by Napoleon to every indignity and forced to drain 
to the dregs the cup of humiliation. This had for a result the call- 
ing into life in the nobler souls among the Germans of the 
dormant sentiment of national patriotism. The growth of the 
new feeling was stimulated and directed by various agencies. 
Among these were the stirring patriotic songs of the poets Korner, 
Schiller, and others, which kindled in thousands of German hearts 
an unwonted fervor of enthusiasm for the Fatherland. 

Education became another of the means of national quickening 
and regeneration. In the year 1808 the philosopher Fichte de- 
livered before Berlin audiences a remarkable course of lectures 
entitled "Addresses to the German Nation." No such appeal 
had been made to the German mind and heart since Luther 
published his "Address to the German Nobility" (sect. 294). 
Fichte's idea was that public education was the only hopeful 
agency for the moral and political regeneration of the German 
nation. The German youth must be taught the duty of unselfish 
devotion to the public welfare and must be made to realize the 
joy of making sacrifices for the Fatherland. Thus was a wholly 
new spirit breathed into German education and German phi- 
losophy.^ Thousands of German youths were stirred by a senti- 
ment they had never felt before, — ardent love for the German 
name and the German land. 

1 Hitherto the greatest thinkers and writers of Germany had insisted that the indi- 
vidual seek culture simply for his own sake. The State was the thing of last concern 
with the great poet Goethe. National patriotism he regarded as a narrow sentiment 
unworthy of a great mind. The poet Lessing declared patriotism to be "a heroic 
weakness," and love of fatherland a sentiment which he had never felt. Equally free 
from this " heroic weakness," as related to a Geitnan fatherland, was the philosopher 
Hegel. The idea with all these great poets and philosophers was that Cosmopolitanism 
is a nobler thing than Nationalism, — that men should regard themselves not as citizens 
of a paltry state but as citizens of the world. 



498 



THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE 



[§ 577 



At the same time that the poets, philosophers, and teachers 
were creating by their appeals and methods a new spirit in 
Prussian society, the masses of the people were being reached 
and awakened by the social and economic reforms carried out 
by the eminent patriot statesmen Baron vom Stein and Prince 
von Hardenberg. 

Two thirds of the population of Prussia were at this time serfs. 
Now, Stein's controlling idea was that the strength of a state 

depends upon the patriotism of the 
people ; but his insight revealed to 
him the truth that "patriots cannot 
be made out of serfs." Hence his 
policy of enfranchisement. 

By a celebrated Edict of Eman- 
cipation serfdom was abolished. 
This decree, by reason of its far- 
reaching consequences, deserves a 
place along with the Emancipation 
Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln 
and the Edict of the Emperor Alex- 
ander II which liberated the Russian 
serfs. 

Along with serfdom, class privi- 
leges and distinctions, which had divided the population pf Prussia 
into classes separated by almost impassable lines, were now swept 
away. The towns were given a measure of local self-government, 
which was to prepare the way for the representatives of the people 
to participate in the national government. 

While Stein and Hardenberg were effecting these reforms in 
the civil realm, Scharnhorst, the Minister of War, was reorganiz- 
ing the army on the model of that of France. The old army, 
which had gone to pieces so disgracefully on the field of Jena, was 
made up of conscripted peasants, officered by incompetent and 
insolent nobles. Flogging was the punishment for even the most 
trivial offenses. The new army was an army of self-respecting 
citizens, a truly national army, based on universal military service. 




Fkj. 91. Baron vom Stein 
(From an engraving by Roffc) 



§ 578] NAPOLEON'S INVASION OF RUSSIA 499 

The effect of these reforms upon the spirit of the people was 
magical. They effected the political and moral regeneration of 
Prussia. Prussia regenerated became the leader of the German 
nation in the memorable War of Liberation, which we are now 
approaching. This uprising of the Prussian nation against Napo- 
leon forms one of the most dramatic passages in the history of 
the German people. 

578. Napoleon's Invasion of Russia (1812-I813). The sig- 
nal for the general uprising of Germany and the rest of Europe 
was the terrible misfortune which befell Napoleon in his invasion 
of Russia. Various circumstances had concurred to weaken the 
friendship and break the alliance between the Russian Emperor 
and Napoleon, but the main cause of mutual distrust and aliena- 
tion was the Continental Blockade. This had inflicted immense 
loss upon Russian trade, and the Tsar had finally refused to 
carry out Napoleon's decrees, and entered a coalition against 
France. 

Napoleon resolved to force Russia, as he had the rest of con- 
tinental Europe, to bow to his will. Gathering contingents from 
all his vassal states, he crossed the Russian frontier at the head 
of what was proudly called the Grand Army, numbering upwards 
of four hundred thousand men. After making a single stand at 
Smolensk, the Russian army avoided battle and, as it retreated 
into the interior, devastated the country in front of the advancing 
enemy. Finally, at Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow, the 
Russians halted and offered battle to cover the city, but in a ter- 
rible bloody struggle, in which the aggregate loss in killed and 
wounded of the two armies was upwards of seventy thousand 
men, their resistance was broken and the invaders entered the 
ancient capital in triumph. 

To his astonishment Napoleon found the city practically de- 
serted by its inhabitants; and two days after he had established 
himself in the empty palace of the Tsar (in the Kremlin), fires, 
started in some unknown way, broke out simultaneously in dif- 
ferent quarters of the city. The conflagration raged for five days, 
until the greater part of the city was reduced to ashes. 



500 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 578 

Napoleon's situation was now critical. He had thought that as 
soon as the French army was in Moscow the Emperor Alexander 
would sue for peace. But to Napoleon's messages Alexander made 
reply that he would not enter into negotiations with him so long 
as a single French soldier stood upon Russian soil. 

In the hope that the Tsar would abandon his heroic resolve, 
Napoleon lingered about the ruined city until the middle of 
October and then finally gave orders for the return march. This 
delay was a fatal mistake and resulted in one of the greatest 
tragedies in history. Before the retreating French columns had 







Fig. 92. The Kremlin of Moscow. (From a photograph) 

covered half the distance to the frontier, the terrible Russian 
winter was upon them. The sufferings of the ill-clad soldiers were 
intense. Thousarids were frozen to death. The spot of each 
bivouac was marked by the circle of dead around the watch fires. 
Sometimes in a single night as many as two or three hundred 
perished. Thousands more were slain by the peasants and the 
wild Cossacks, who hovered about the retreating columns and 
harassed them day and night. The passage of the river Beresina 
was attended with appalling losses. Soon after the passage of 
this stream Napoleon, conscious that the fate of his empire de- 
pended upon his presence in Paris, left the remnant of the army 
in charge of his marshals and hurried by post to his capital. 

The loss by death of the French and their allies in this disas- 
trous campaign is reckoned at upwards of two hundred and fifty 
thousand men, while that of the Russians is estimated to have 
been almost as large. 



§ 579] THE WAR OF LIBERATION 501 

579. The War of Liberation; the Battle of Leipzig, the 
"Battle of the Nations" (October 16-19, 1813). Napoleon's 
fortunes were buried with his Grand Army in the snows of Russia. 
His woeful losses here, taken in connection with his great losses 
in Spain, encouraged the European powers to think that now they 
could crush him. A sixth coalition was formed, embracing Russia, 
Prussia, England, Sweden, and later Austria. 

Napoleon made gigantic efforts to prepare for the final struggle. 
By the spring of 18 13 he was at the head of a new army, number- 
ing eventually over three hundred thousand men, — boys we 
should say, so extremely young were a large number of the fresh 
recruits. Falling upon the allied armies of the Russians and 
Prussians, first at Liitzen and then at Bautzen, Napoleon gained 
a decisive victory upon both fields. Austria now appeared in the 
lists, and at Leipzig, in Saxony, Napoleon was attacked by the 
leagued armies of Europe. So many were the powers represented 
upon this renowned field that it is known in history as the 
"'Battle of the Nations." The combat lasted three days. Napo- 
leon was defeated and forced to retreat into France. 

The armies of the allies now poured over all the French fron- 
tiers. Napoleon's tremendous efforts to roll back the tide of inva- 
sion were all in vain. Paris surrendered to the allies (March 31, 
1814). As the struggle became manifestly hopeless, Napoleon's 
most trusted officers deserted and betrayed him. The French 
Senate, acting under the inspiration of the celebrated Talleyrand, 
who had earlier served Napoleon as his Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
issued a decree deposing the Emperor and restoring the throne 
to the Bourbons. Napoleon was forced to abdicate and was ban- 
ished to the little island of Elba in the Mediterranean, being 
permitted to retain his title of Emperor and to keep about him 
a few of his old guards. But Elba was a very diminutive empire for 
one to whom the half of Europe had seemed too small, and we shall 
not be surprised to learn that Napoleon was not content with it. 

580. "The Hundred Days" (March 20-June 29, 1815). Upon 
invitation of the French Senate the brother of Louis XVI now 
assumed the crown with the title of Louis XVIII. With this 



502 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 580 

new Bourbon king the allies arranged a treaty,^ the shifty Talley- 
rand acting as Louis' representative. This treaty gave France the 
frontiers she had in 1792. 

In accordance with a promise he had made, Louis gave France 
a constitution. Notwithstanding, he acted very much as though 
his power were unlimited. He styled himself "King of France 
and Navarre by the Grace of God.'' He always alluded to the 
year in which he began to rule as the nineteenth year of his reign, 
thus affecting to ignore wholly the government of the Republic 
and the Empire. This excited alarm, because it seemed to ques- 
tion the validity of all that had been done since the dethronement 
and execution of Louis XVI. Some, fearing lest all the work of 
the Revolution would be undone, began to desire the return of 
Napoleon, and the wish was perhaps what gave rise to the report 
which was spread about that he would come back with the spring 
violets. 

In the month of March, 181 5, as the commissioners of the 
various powers were sitting at Vienna rearranging the landmarks 
and boundaries obliterated by the French inundation, news was 
brought to them that Napoleon had escaped from Elba and was 
in France. At first the members of the Congress were incredu- 
lous, regarding the thing as a jest, and were with difficulty con- 
vinced of the truth of the report. 

Taking advantage of the general dissatisfaction with the rule 
of the restored Bourbons, Napoleon had resolved upon a bold 
push for the recovery of his crown. Landing with about eight 
hundred guardsmen at one of the southern ports of France, he 
aroused all the country with one of his stirring addresses, and 
then immediately pushed on towards Paris. His journey to the 
capital was one continuous ovation. One regiment after another, 
forgetting their recent oath of loyalty to the Bourbons, hastened 
to join his train. His old generals and soldiers embraced him with 
transports of joy.- Marshal Ney, sent to arrest the Emperor, 

1 First Treaty of Paris, May 30, 18 14. 

2 Napoleon's return was welcomed hy the army, especially by the returned prisoners 
from Russia and Germany, but it was not welcomed by the French people generally. 



§580] "THE HUNDRED DAYS" 503 

whom he had promised to bring to Paris in a cage, at the first 
sight of his old commander threw himself into his arms and 
pledged him his sword and his life. Louis XVIH, deserted by 
his army, was left helpless and, as Napoleon approached the gates 
of Paris, fled from his throne. 

Napoleon desired peace with the sovereigns of Europe; but 
they did not think the peace of the continent could be main- 
tained so long as he sat upon the French throne. For the seventh 
and last time the allies leagued their armies against "the dis- 
turber of the peace of Europe." 

Hoping to overwhelm the armies of the allies by striking them 
one after another before they had time to unite, Napoleon moved 
swiftly into Belgium with an army of one hundred and thirty 
thousand in order to crush there the English under the Duke 
of Wellington and the Prussians under Bliicher. Fie first fell in 
with and defeated the Prussian army and then faced the English 
at Waterloo (June 18, 181 5). 

The story of Waterloo need not be told, — how all day the 
French broke their columns in vain on the English squares; 
how, at the critical moment towards the close of the day when 
Wellington was wishing for Bliicher or for night, Bliicher with 
a fresh force of thirty thousand Prussians turned the tide of 
battle; and how the famous Old Guard, which knew how to die 
but not how to surrender,^ made its last charge and left its 
hitherto invincible squares upon the lost field. 

A second time Napoleon was forced to abdicate,- and a second 
time Louis XVHI ascended his unstable throne.^ Napoleon made 
his way to the coast, purposing to take ship for the United 
States; but the way was barred by British watchfulness, and he 
was constrained to surrender to the commander of the English 

1 General Cambronne, the commander of the Guard, when summoned to surrender, 
is said to have returned this reply : " The Guard dies, but never surrenders." There is 
doubt concerning the origin of the famous phrase. 

2 His abdication was in favor of his little son, whom he proclaimed " Napoleon II, 
Emperor of the French." 

3 The allies now signed with Louis what is known as the Second Treaty of Paris 
(November 20, 18 15). France had now to accept the frontiers which were hers in 17S9, 
and to pay an indemnity of 700,000 francs. 



504 THE NAPOLEONIC EMPIRE [§ 580 

warship Bellerophon. "I come, like Themistocles," lie said, "to 
throw myself upon the hospitality of the English people." 

But no one believed that Napoleon could safely be left at large, 
or that his presence, even though he were in close confinement, 
anywhere in Europe would be consistent with the future secu- 
rity and repose of the continent. Some even urged that he be 
given up to Louis XVIII to be shot as a rebel and an outlaw. The 
final decision was that he should be banished to the island of 
St. Helena, in the South Atlantic. Thither he was carried by the 
English and closely guarded by them until his death in 182 1. 

The story of these last years of Napoleon Bonaparte, as gath- 
ered from the companions of his exile, is one of the most pathetic 
in all history. At the time of his death he was in his fifty-second 
year. As a military genius and commander he left a deeper 
impress upon the imagination of the world and fills a larger 
place in history, probably, than any other man who ever lived. " He 
was as great as a man can be without virtue" (De Tocqueville). 

Selections from the Sources. Bourrienne, Memoirs of Napoleoti Bona- 
parte. (Bourrienne was Bonaparte's schoolfellow and comrade, and then his 
private secretary from 1796 to 1S02.) Tarbell, I. M., The Words of Napoleon 
(contains interesting selections from Napoleon's addresses and letters). 

Secondary Works. Bourne, H. E., The Re-t'olutionary Period in Fratice, 
chaps, xvii-xxvii. Among the numerous biographies of Napoleon the follow- 
ing possess special merit and authority: Fournier, A., Napoleon the First \ 
Johnston, R. M., Napoleon; Rose, J. H., The Life of Napoleon /, 2 vols.; 
Sloane, W. M., Life of Napoleon Bonaparte, 4 vols.; Lanfrey, P., The History 
of Napoleon the First, 4 vols, (left incomplete by the death of the author) ; 
Seeley, J. R., Napoleon the First; and Ropes, J. C, The First Napoleon. 
(Lanfrey makes the Emperor the subject of bitter reproach.) One of the best 
extended histories of the Napoleonic period is Thiers, L. A., History of the 
Consulate and the Empire, 1 2 vols. 

Works dealing with special phases of the history of the period : Mahan, 
A. T., The Infitence of Sea Pozver upon the French Revolution and Empi^-e, 
2 vols. ; Seeley, J. R., Life and Times of Stein, 2 vols. ; and Marriott, J. A. R., 
and Robertson, C. G., The Evolution of Prussia, chaps, v-vii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The sale of Louisiana to the United States: 
Roosevelt, Theodore, The Winning of the West (1905-1908 ed.), vol. iv, 
pp. 184-212 ; Oilman, D. Q,., James Monroe (American Statesmen), pp. 74-93 ; 
Hosmer, J. K., History of the Louisiana Purchase. 2. Napoleon at St. Helena: 
Lord Rosebery, Napoleon : the Last Phase. 



///. FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA TO THE 
TREATY OF VERSA HIES 

(1815-1920) 

CHAPTER XXXV 
THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND METTERNICH 

581. Ideas bequeathed by the French Revolution. The 

social and political history of Europe since the overthrow of 
Napoleon is a continuation of the history of the great social and 
political upheaval which we have been witnessing. The dominant 
forces at work throughout this period have been the ideas or 
principles inherited from the French Revolution. 

There were three of these principles which, as revolutionary 
forces in history, have already become familiar to us in tracing 
the story of the Revolution and the Empire. The first was the 
principle of equality, the principle that all men are equal before 
the law. The Revolutionists proclaimed this doctrine with religious 
fervor. It was spread broadcast over Europe. The French army, 
as it has been tersely expressed, was " equality on the march." 
The Code Napoleon, as we have seen, embodied this principle 
of equality, and wherever it was set up, — in the Netherlands, in 
the West German states, in part of Poland, in Switzerland, and 
in Italy, — it exerted the same leveling influence that it had in 
France. As Christianity brought in equality before God, so did 
the Revolution bring in equality before Caesar. The one made 
all men equal in the religious realm, the other made all men 
equal in the civil realm. 

The second principle promulgated by the Revolution was that 
of popular sovereignty. According to this doctrine, governments 
derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. The 

50s 



So6 CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND METTERNICH [§ 582 

laws should be the expression of the will of all. The people 
either directly or through their representatives should have part 
in the government. All rulers and magistrates are the servants 
of the people and are responsible to them. 

The third principle that underlay the Revolution was that of 
nationality. This principle requires that every people shall be 
free to choose its own form of government and to manage its 
own affairs in its own way. This idea worked itself out during 
the course of the Revolution. It was evoked, as we have seen, in 
great measure by Napoleon's cynical disregard of national senti- 
ment and his wanton violation of national rights, 

582. How these Principles have worked as a Creative Force 
in the World. These principles or ideas, as we have said, were the 
precious political heritage which the nineteenth century received 
from the Revolution.^ They were full of vitality and energy. 
Their outworking, their embodiment in social institutions, in law, 
in government, makes up a large part of universal history since 
the downfall of Napoleon. 

Throughout the period that generous sentiment of '89, that 
all men are born and remain free and equal in rights, has been 
at work emancipating and elevating the hitherto unfree and down- 
trodden orders of society, and in removing civil and religious and 
race disabilities from disqualified classes in the state. The period 
is especially rich in emancipation edicts and statutes. Slavery and 
serfdom and every form of mediaeval feudal inequality, under the 
influence of the new spirit of equality, have disappeared or are 
fast disappearing from the civilized world. 

The doctrine of the sovereignty of the people has likewise been 
a potent force in shaping the events of the period. A chief feature 
of the history of the time has been the substitution of representa- 
tive government for autocratic monarchy. It is this cause of 
democracy, of self-government, that has enlisted the efforts and 
inspired the self-sacrifice of the noblest spirits of the age. The 

1 Of course these ideas were not novel doctrines promulgated now for the first time. 
All that is meant by calling them the ideas of the French Revolution is that by the 
Revolution they were invested with new authority and were given new course in the world. 



§583] THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 507 

people of every country where any considerable degree of en- 
lightenment has come to prevail have passionately espoused this 
principle and have fought for its establishment as the best hope 
for a better future for themselves and for their children. 

Equally powerful as a revolutionary force has been the sentiment* 
of nationality. This has been at once a creative and a disruptive 
force. It has called into existence many nation states ; under the 
strain of a world war it has dismembered, wholly or in part, great 
historic empires and has remolded or is remolding their elements 
in accord with racial affinities. In a word, it has in large meas- 
ure reconstructed the European state system and given a wholly 
new appearance to the political map of Europe and western Asia. 

But these ideas, as we have intimated, have not had free 
course. Their embodiment in social institutions and in political 
forms has, in most countries, been a process violent and revolu- 
tionary in character. This has resulted from these liberal prin- 
ciples coming into conflict with certain opposing conservative 
doctrines with which they have had to struggle for supremacy. 
And this brings us to the starting point of the history of the 
last century, — the celebrated Congress of Vienna. 

583. The Congress of Vienna (September, 1814- June, 1915). 
After the first abdication of Napoleon, as we have seen, the 
European sovereigns, either in person or by their representatives, 
met at Vienna to readjust the affairs of the Continent. As we 
shall hereafter, in connection with the history of the separate 
European countries, have occasion to say something respecting 
the relations of each to the Congress, we shall here say only a 
word regarding the spirit and temper of the assembly and the 
general character of its work. 

The Vienna commissioners seemed to have but one thought 
and aim, — to restore everything as nearly as possible to its con- 
dition before the Revolution. They had no care for the people; 
the princes were their only concern. The principle of nationality 
was wholly ignored, while that of the sovereignty of the people 
was, by most of the plenipotentiaries, looked upon as a principle 
of disorder to be repressed in every possible way. The Congress 



5o8 CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND METTERNICH [§ 583 

was concisely and truthfully characterized by a liberal statesman 
of the time as " an auction of nations and an orgy of kings." 

The first principle adopted by the Congress was that of legiti- 
macy. According to this principle a throne is to be regarded like 
^any ordinary piece of property. Long possession gives a good and 
indefeasible title. 

Under this rule all the new usurping families set up by Napo- 
leon were ejected without ceremony, and the old exiled dynasties 
were restored. The most important of these restitutions, effected 
either by the direct action of the Congress or already consum- 
mated by events and confirmed by it, were those which brought 
back the banished Bourbon dynasties in France, Spain, and 
Naples. 

The principle was applied only in the case of hereditary lay 
rulers. It was not applied to the republican or semirepublican 
governments of city-states like Venice or the free cities of Ger- 
many, nor to ecclesiastical states. The crowd of ecclesiastical 
German princes whom Napoleon had dispossessed of their ter- 
ritories were not reinstated. The Pope, however, was made an 
exception to this exception. Pius VII was given back the 
Papal States. These formed now the only ecclesiastical state 
left in Europe. 

Another exception in the application of the principle was in 
the case of the hundreds of petty German rulers whose territories 
Napoleon in his reorganization of Germany had given to the 
larger states. These princelets were not restored. 

This question of legitimacy having been settled, the next ques- 
tion was how the territories recovered from Napoleon should be 
distributed among the dynasties recognized as legitimate. For 
most of the sovereigns this was the subject of chief interest. 
"The real purpose of the Congress," frankly wrote one of the 
plenipotentiaries, "was to divide amongst the conquerors the 
spoils taken from the vanquished." In making the distribution 
no thought whatever was taken of the rights and claims of race 
or nationality. The inhabitants of the countries available for 
division were apportioned among the different sovereigns exactly 



§583] 



THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 



509 



as a herd of cattle might be divided up and apportioned among 
different owners. The following territorial settlements were 
among the most important. 

The Belgian and Dutch provinces were united into a single 
state, which, under the name of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, 
was given to a prince of the House of Orange. The purpose of 
this was to create on this side of France a strong barrier against 











^/\.^^ V>j 






\ w [im^^^ 









Fig. 93. The Congress of Vienna, 1814-1815. (After the painting 
by Jean Baptiste Isabey) 

possible French aggression in the future. The fact that the 
Dutch and the Belgians, by reason of differences in race, in reli- 
gion, and in industrial development, formed really two distinct 
nations was wholly ignored. 

A great part of what had been Poland was made into a subject 
kingdom of the Russian Empire. The Poles were informed that 
they must give up all thought and hope of the restoration of their 
national independence.^ 

1 Sweden was confirmed in the possession of Norway, which Denmark lost as a con- 
sequence of her alhance with Napoleon. The two countries were to form a dual monarchy, 
each having its own Parliament, or Diet, but united under a single crown. This arrange- 
ment subsisted until 1905, when Norway declared the union dissolved, and, choosing 
Prince Charles of Denmark' as king, became an independent kingdom. 



510 CONGRESS OF VIENNA .'\ND METTERNICH [§583 

Prussia was given about half of the kingdom of Saxony, exten- 
sive territories on both sides of the Rhine, and other lands, which 
gave her a more preponderant position in Germany than she had 
before the Revolution. 

Lombardy and Venetia in Upper Italy, along with other lands, 
were given to Austria. This extension of Austrian rule over 
Italian lands was one of the grossest violations of the principles of 
nationality of which the Congress was guilty, and was to be sig- 
nally avenged when the hour for Italian unity and independence 
arrived. 

In Germany the Congress built upon the basis laid by Napo- 
leon. Thirty-nine of the forty-two sovereign states, including 
Prussia and Austria, to which he had reduced the hundreds of 
states constituting the old Germanic system, were organized into 
a confederation modeled upon the Confederation of the Rhine.^ 

In Italy, on the other hand. Napoleon's work was undone and 
the old order of things was reestablished. With the exception of 
the provinces in the north, which, as we have seen, were given to 
Austria, the peninsula was divided into independent states, such 
as had existed before the Revolution. 

Great Britain's acquisitions were in keeping with the mari- 
time and colonial interests she had at stake in the great struggle 
with Napoleon. Of the islands and coast lands which she had 
wrested from France and her allies she kept, in the Mediterranean 
and in the East, Malta and Mauritius, snatched from the French, 
and the Cape of Good Hope and a part of Guiana, taken from the 
Dutch. She also secured the protectorate of the Ionian Islands, 
which gave her control of the Adriatic Sea. In the West Indies 
she retained two little islands (Tobago and St. Lucia) taken from 
France. - 

A third matter which occupied the attention particularly of the 
committee on German affairs was the granting of constitutions 

1 For further details concerning the reorganization of Germany, see sect. 633. 

2 The little island of Helgoland, which commands the mouth of the Elbe, was at 
this time ceded to Great Britain by Denmark. In 1S90 Great Britain ceded the islet to 
the new German Empire. 



§583] THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA 511 

to their subjects by th'e different sovereigns. In spirit and in 
temper the restored rulers were for the most part the old pre- 
revolutionary despots come into their own again, but thoroughly 
frightened by what had happened. Their desire was to rule in 
the old arbitrary way; but there were those among them who 
recognized that a change had come over the world, and that the 
old absolutism could not with safety be reestablished. The Tsar 
Alexander seemed to entertain some genuine liberal ideas. 

Consequently constitutions were talked about. Louis XVIII 
had been required by the terms of the treaties of Paris to give 
France a constitution, the allies understanding perfectly that if 
the restored Bourbons should attempt to rule as absolute sover- 
eigns there would be trouble again which would unsettle everything 
in Europe. And now the Congress recommended to the German 
princes that representative bodies ("Assemblies of Estates," 
they were called; the use of the word constitution was carefully 
avoided) be established in each state. The only states, besides 
France, which at this time actually received constitutions were 
the Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, and Norway.^ 

And even where constitutions already existed or were now 
granted, these charters gave the people very little share in the 
government. They were constitutions of the aristocratic type; 
that is, they placed the government, where its form was monar- 
chical, in the hands of the sovereign and a very small body of 
voters. Practically the old regime of absolutism was almost every- 
where reestablished." The world was made safe for autocracy. 

But the Revolution had impaired beyond restoration reverence 
for the divine right of kings. An attempt to restore autocratic 

1 Hungary, like England, had a constitution which had taken form during mediaeval 
times. Sweden also had a constitution dating from the revolutionary period. 

2 Besides reconstituting the state system of Europe, the Congress dealt with several 
other subordinate matters of general concern, such as the navigation of rivers, the rights 
of aliens, and the slave trade. In this latter matter the Congress, under the influence of 
Great Britain, made a distinct recognition of the principles of equality and personal 
liberty promulgated by the Revolution. It issued a declaration condemning the slave 
traffic, and the several powers agreed to use their best endeavors in its suppression. 
This was almost the only action of the Congress in which it put itself in line with the 
social and moral forces which were to mold the history of the century then opening. 



512 CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND METTERNICH [§584 



government in Europe was an attempt to restore an outgrown 
cult, — to set up again the fallen Dagon in his place. Notwith- 
standing, the commissioners at Vienna, blind to the spirit and 
tendencies of the times, did set up once more the broken idol, 
— only, however, to see it flung down again by the memorable 
political upheavals of the next century. The kings had had 
their Peace Congress ; one hundred years later the peoples were to 

have theirs — the Peace of Versailles. 
584. Prince Metternich. The 
spirit of the monarchical restora- 
tion of 1815, the spirit which con- 
trolled the Congress of Vienna, was 
incarnate in the celebrated Austrian 
minister. Prince Metternich. He 
hated the Revolution, which to 
him was the spirit of evil let 
loose in the world. The democratic 
spirit he declared to be the spirit of 
disorder which could not fail " to 
change daylight into darkest night." 
The demand of the people for a 
share in government he regarded as 
presumptuous, and he' was wholly 
convinced that any concession to 
their demands could result in nothing save horrible confusion 
and bloodshed. He believed that the only hope of the world was 
the old divine-right absolutism. 

Metternich's system, therefore, was a system of repression. His 
maxim was, "Let nothing be changed." A diplomatist of wonder- 
ful astuteness, of wide experience, and possessed of an intimate 
knowledge of the public affairs of all Europe, Metternich ex- 
erted a vast influence upon the history of the years from 181 5 
to 1848. This period might appropriately be called the Age of 
Metternich. It was due largely to the Prince that during this 
period the old autocratic form of government prevailed so gen- 
erally in Europe, 




Fig. 94. Prince Metternich 

(From a painting by Si'r TJiomas 

Lawrence) 



§585j METTERNICH AND THE HOLY ALLIANCE 513 

585. Metternich and the Holy Alliance. The activity of Met- 
ternich during the earlier portion of the period of his ascendancy 
was so closely connected with a celebrated league known as the 
Holy Alliance that we must here say a word respecting the origin 
of this association. 

The Holy Alliance was a league formed just after the fall 
of Napoleon by the Tsar Alexander and having as its chief 
members Russia, Austria, and Prussia. The ostensible object of 
the league was the maintenance of religion, peace, and order in 
Europe and the reduction to practice in politics of the teachings 
of Christ. The several sovereigns entering into the union promised 
to be fathers to their people, to rule in love and with reference 
solely to the promotion of the welfare of their subjects. 

All this had a very millennial look. But the Holy Alliance very 
soon became practically a league for the maintenance of absolute 
principles of government, in opposition to the liberal tendencies 
of. the age. Under the pretext of maintaining religion, justice, 
and order, the sovereigns of the union acted in concert to sup- 
press every aspiration for political liberty among their subjects. 

586. Other Principles, Movements, and Interests. Lest the 
foregoing sections should create in the mind of the reader a wrong 
impression of post-revolutionary history, we must here remind him 
of what we have said repeatedly; namely, that no single formula 
will suffice to sum up the history of any age. History is ever 
very complex, for many ideas and many forces are always simul- 
taneously at work shaping and coloring events. 

The history of the period since the Congress of Vienna presents 
a special complexity. While the great ideas transmitted to the age 
as a bequest from the Revolution were forces that have given the 
age its chief features, still throughout the era various other ideas, 
principles, and interests have contributed greatly to fill particularly 
the later years of the period with a vast complexity of move- 
ments, — intellectual, religious, industrial, and colonial. 

The spirit of the Renaissance has been in the society of the 
period a pervasive and powerful influence. Intelligence has be- 
come ever more diffused, and modern science, a special product 



514 CONGRESS OF VIENNA AND METTERNICH [§586 

of the revival, has constantly revealed fresh wonders of the uni- 
verse and armed man with new instruments of research and of 
mastery over nature. 

The true spirit of the Reformation, too, has been at work. As 
the years have passed, creeds have grown more liberal, and the 
beneficent sentiment of toleration in religion, which has been 
declared to be " the best fruit of the last four centuries," ^ has 
made rapid progress in the world. 

I Furthermore, the era has witnessed an unparalleled industrial 
development resulting from fortunate discoveries, ingenious me- 
chanical inventions, and a great variety of other causes. To a 
brief review of this world-transforming movement we shall give 
a special chapter. 

The period has also been marked by a wonderful expansion 
movement of the European peoples, a movement which has given 
the world very largely into the possession, or brought it under the 
control, of the bearers of the new and higher civilization created 
by the revolutions of the last three centuries in the homeland of 
Europe. To this significant movement we shall also devote a 
separate chapter under the heading "The Expansion of Europe." 

The period was closed by the greatest war of all times, a war 
whose ultimate results must inevitably be so profound and far- 
reaching that it may well mark the opening of a new epoch in 
universal history. A review of the deeper causes of this stupendous 
conflict, a summary of its outstanding events, and a brief survey 
of the changed world which emerged from the overwhelming 
catastrophe will be all our prescribed space will permit. 

Selections from the Sources. Memoirs of Prince Metternich (trans, by 
Mrs. Alexander Napier), vol. ii, pp. 553-599, and vols, iii-v. (These volumes 
cover the years from 1815 to 1S29. They are of the first importance for this 
period.) A Peace Congress of Intrigue (composed of the personal memoirs of 
its important participants ; compiled by Frederick Freksa and translated by 
Harry Hansen). Ford, C, Life and Letters of jMaJame A'riidener. (This work 
lights up a remarkable passage in the life of the Russian Emperor Alexander I, 
and reveals the genesis of the Holy Alliance.) 

1 The inscription written by President Charles W. Eliot for the Water Gate of the 
World's Columbian E.xposition at Chicago in 1S93. 



REFERENCES 515 

Secondary Works. Among the great number of works covering the cen- 
tury between the Congress of Vienna and the World War the following 
present in brief survey the whole or some part or phase of the history of 
the period : Fyffe, C. A., A History of Mode7ti Europe, lygs-iSyS (Popular 
Edition) ; Phillips, W. A., Modem Europe, iSij-iSgg ; Andrews, C. M., The 
Historical Developtnent of A/ode rn Europe, 2 vols.; Seignobos, C, A Political 
History of Eicrope since 1814 ; Hazen, C. D., Modem European Histoiy, 
chaps, xii-xxviii ; Hayes, C. J. H., A Political and Social Histo9y of Modern 
Europe, vol. ii ; Lowell, A. L., Governments and Parties iti Continental Europe, 
2 vols.; and Rose, J. II., T/ie Development of ike Eicropean .Vations, 2 vols. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Prince Metternich and Napoleon: Malleson, 
G. B., Life of Prince Metternich, chap. ix. 2. The theory of absolutism and the 
theory of constitutionalism in 1S15: Seignobos, C, History of Contemporary 
Civilization, pp. 204-207, 



CHAPTER XXXVI 

FRANCE SINCE THE SECOND RESTORATION 

(1815-1914) 

587. The Reign of Louis XVIII (i8i5[i4l-i824). "Your king, 
whose fathers reigned over your fathers for more than eight 
centuries, now returns to devote the rest of his days to defend 
and to comfort you." Such were the words used by Louis upon 
his second return to his people after Waterloo. The events of 
the Hundred Days had instructed and humbled him. Profiting 
by his experience, Louis ruled throughout a great part of the 
remainder of his reign with reasonable heed to the changes 
effected by the Revolution. But as he grew old and infirm he 
yielded more and more to the extreme Royalist party, which was 
again raising its head, and the government entered upon a course 
looking to the restoration of the old order of things. 

588. The Reign of Charles X (i824-i83o); the Revolution 
of 1830. Upon the death of Louis in 1S24 and the accession 
of Charles X this reactionary policy soon became more pro- 
nounced. The new king seemed utterly incapable of profiting 
by the teachings of the past. It was particularly his blind, stub- 
born course that gave point to the saying, "A Bourbon learns 
nothing and forgets nothing." 

It is not necessary for our purpose that we rehearse in detail 
what Charles did or what he failed to do. His aim was to undo 
the work of the Revolution, just as it was the aim of James II in 
England to undo the work of the Puritan Revolution. He dis- 
regarded the constitution, restored the clergy to power, reestab- 
lished a strict censorship of the press, and changed the laws by 
royal proclamation. He seemed bent on restoring divine-right 
monarchy in France. He declared that he would rather saw 
wood for a living than rule after the fashion of the English kings. 

S16 



§589] THE ''JULY REVOLUTION" 517 

The outcome of Charles' course might have been foreseen. Paris 
rose in revolt; the streets were blocked with barricades; Charles 
was escorted to the seacoast, whence he took ship for England. 

France did not at this time think of a republic. She was in- 
clined to try further the experiment of a constitutional monarchy. 
Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who represented the younger 
branch of the Bourbon family, was placed on the throne and the 
constitution was revised. In the charter which Louis XVIII had 
granted he had styled himself "King of France by the grace of 
God." The new constitution declared Louis Philippe to be "King 
of the French by the grace of God aitd by the will of the nation." 
The first principle of the Revolution — the sovereignty of the 
people — was thus embodied in the fundamental law of France. 

589. Effect upon Europe of the "July Revolution" of 1830; 
Origin of the Kingdom of Belgium. France has been called the 
Enceladus of Europe. There is sufficient instruction in the sug- 
gested parable to make it worth our while to recall the myth to 
memory. As fable has it, Enceladus was one of the giants who 
made war upon Oh^mpian Jove. In the route of the giants, 
Minerva, helping Jove, disabled Enceladus by throwing .^tna on 
top of him and pinning him forever to the earth. The stability 
of things in Sicily was thereby endangered, for as often as the 
giant turned his weary sides the whole island was convulsed. 

France, having made war upon the Olympian hierarchy ot divine- 
right kings, is by them worsted in battle and then pinned to the 
earth with the weight of Bourbonism. As often as the giant 
turns his weary sides there is an eruption, and the whole continent, 
like Trinacria of old, trembles to its remotest verge. 

The convulsion in Paris shook all the restored thrones, and for 
a moment threatened to topple into ruins the whole fabric of 
absolutism that had been so carefully upreared by Metternich and 
the other political restorationists of the Congress of Vienna.^ In 

1 A wave of hope shot through Poland ; the people arose and drove out the Russian 
garrisons. The armies of the Tsar, however, were quickly on the spot, and before the 
close of the year 1831 the Polish patriots were once more under the foot of their Rus- 
sian master. It was a hard fate that awaited the unhappy nation. Their constitution was 
taken away and Poland was made a mere province of the Russian Empire (1832). 



51,8 FRANCE SINCE THE RESTORATION [§590 

the Netherlands the artificial order established in 1815 (sect. 583) 
was wholly destroyed. The Belgians arose, declared themselves 
independent of Holland, adopted a liberal constitution, and elected 
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg as their king (1831). Thus came into 
existence the separate kingdom of Belgium. The independence 
and neutrality of the little state was guaranteed by all the great 
powers. 

590. The Revolution of 1848 and the Establishment of the 
Second Republic. The reign of Louis Philippe up to 1848 was 
very unquiet, yet was not marked by any disturbance of great 
importance. But during all this time the ideas of the Revolution 
were working among the people, and the democratic party was con- 
stantly gaining in strength. Finally, there came a demand for 
the extension of the suffrage. At this time there were only about 
two hundred thousand voters in France, the possession of a certain 
amount of property being required as a qualification for the fran- 
chise. The government steadily refused all electoral reforms. 
Guizot, the king's chief minister, declared that "this world is no 
place for universal suffrage." 

Enceladus at last turned his weary sides. There was a convul- 
sion like that of 1830. The center of this disturbance of course 
was Paris. Louis Philippe, thoroughly frightened by the prodigy, 
fled to England. After his departure the Paris mob dragged the 
throne out of the Tuileries and made a bonfire of it. 

The Second Republic was now established. A new constitution 
established universal suffrage. An election being ordered, Louis 
Napoleon Bonaparte, a nephew of the great Napoleon, was chosen 
President of the New Republic (1848). 

The Paris "February Revolution," as it is called, lighted the 
beacon fires of liberty throughout Europe. "It is scarcely an 
exaggeration to say that, during the month of March, 1848, not 
a single day passed without a constitution being granted some- 
where." France had made another of her irresistible invasions 
of the states of Europe, — "an invasion of ideas." 

591. The Second Empire (]852-i87o). The hfe of the Sec- 
ond Republic spanned only three years. By almost exactly the 



§591] 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 



519 



same steps as those by which his uncle had mounted the imperial 
throne, Louis Napoleon now also ascended to the imperial dignity, 
crushing the Republic as he rose. 

A contest having arisen between the President and the National 
Assembly, the President planned a coup d'etat, — a second Eight- 
eenth Brumaire (sect. 549). He caused the arrest at night of the 
most prominent of the deputies opposed to him in the Assembly 
and dissolved that body. His ap- 
peal to the people to indorse what 
he had done met with a most ex- 
traordinary response. By a ma- 
jority of almost seven million votes 
the nation approved the Presi- 
dent's coup d'etat and rewarded 
him for it by extending his term 
of office to ten years. This was in 
effect the revival of the Consulate 
of 1799. The next year Louis 
Napoleon was made Emperor, and 
■ took the title of Napoleon III 
(1852). 

The secret of Louis Napoleon's 
success in his coup d'etat was in 
part the fear that prevailed of the renewal of the Terror of '93, 
and in part the magic power of the name he bore. At just this 
time the name Napoleon was in France a name to conjure with. 
There had been growing up a Napoleonic legend. Time had 
idealized the founder of the First Empire. 

As the Second and the Third Republic were simply revivals 
and continuations of the First Republic, so was the Second Em- 
pire merely the revival and continuation of the First Empire. It 
was virtually the same in origin, in spirit, and in policy. 

Louis Napoleon had declared that the Empire meant peace. 
But it meant anything except that. The pages of its history are 
filled with the records of wars. There were three important ones 
in which the armies of the Empire took part, — the Crimean War 




Fig. 95. Napoleon III. (After 
a portrait by F. Wiiiterhaltei-) 



520 FRANCE SINCE THE RESTORATION [§592 

(1853-1856), the Austro-Sardinian War (1859), and the Franco- 
Prussian War (1870-1871). The first two of these wars need 
not detain us at this time, since we shall speak of them later in 
connection with Russian and Italian affairs.' All that need be 
said here is that in each of them Louis Napoleon greatly enhanced 
his prestige throughout Europe. 

Respecting the causes of the third war, — the one between 
Prussia and France, — something will be said in connection with 
the rise of Germany as an imperial power (sect. 644) ; therefore 
only the chief events relating to the war itself will be given here. 

Upon the opening of the war three immense German armies swept 
into France. One large French army was defeated in the memo- 
rable battle of Gravelotte and shut up in Metz. Then followed 
the surrender at Sedan, where eighty-three thousand men, includ- 
ing the Emperor himself, gave themselves up as prisoners of war.- 

The German columns now advanced to Paris and began the 
investment of the city (September 19, 1870). All reasonable hope 
of a successful defense of the capital was soon destroyed by the 
surrender to the Germans of Marshal Bazaine at Metz. One 
hundred and seventy-three thousand soldiers and six thousand 
officers became prisoners of war, — the largest army that up to 
that time had ever been taken captive. But Paris held out stub- 
bornly, with great suffering from cold and hunger, three months 
longer; and then, all outside measures for raising the siege having 
failed, capitulated. 

592. Treaty of Frankfort (i87i). By the terms of the treaty 
which followed the surrender of Paris, France was required to pay 
an indemnity of five billion francs^ ($1,000,000,000), and cede 
to Germany the Rhenish province of Alsace and part of Lorraine.* 

1 See sects. 651 and 626. 

2 After the war Louis Napoleon found an asylum in England. He died January 9, 1873. 

3 The last installment was paid in 1873, and the last unit of the German army of 
occupation was then withdrawn. 

■1 The Red Republicans, or Communists, of Paris, indignant at the terms of the 
treaty, organized a Committee of Public Safety in imitation of that of 1703, and called 
the population of the capital to arms. The government finally succeeded in suppressing 
the insurgents, though only after the destruction by fire of many public buildings and 
frightful slaughters in the streets and squares of the city. 



§592] 



TREATY OF FRANKFORT 



521 



The tearing away from France of these provinces was a gross 
violation of the principle of nationality, since the inhabitants of 
the ceded territories, though not wholly French in blood, were 
passionately French in sympathy and attachment. Against the 
"odious abuse of force" of which they were the unhappy victims, 
their delegates in the National Assembly at Bordeaux, on their 
withdrawal from the con- 
vention chamber, made 
the following solemn 
and prophetic protest: 

"Europe cannot permit | 

or ratify the abandon- % 

ment of Alsace and 
Lorraine. The civilized 
nations, as guardians of 
justice and national 
pights, cannot remain in- 
different to the fate of 
their neighbors under 
pain of becoming in their 
turn victims of the out- 
rages they have tolerated. 
Modern Europe cannot al- 
low a people to be seized 
like a herd of cattle; 

she cannot continue deaf to the repeated protests of threatened 
nationalities. . . . We declare once for all null and void an agree- 
ment which disposes of us without our consent. ... In the mo- 
ment we quit this hall, the supreme thought we find in the bottom 
of our hearts is a thought of unutterable attachment to the land 
from which in violence we are torn. Our brothers of Alsace and 
of Lorraine, separated at this rnoment from the common family, 
will preserve to France, absent from their hearthstones, an af- 
fection faithful to the day when she shall return to take her 
place again," ^ 

1 Jordan, A/sace-Lorralnc, pp. 20-22, 




Fig. 96. Louis Adolfme Thiers. (First 
president of the Third French Republic) 



52 2 FRANCE SINCE THE RESTORATION [§593 

593. The Third Republic (i870- ). The form of govern- 
ment which replaced the Empire was repubhcan.^ The current of 
political events under the Republic up to the outbreak of the War 
of 1914 ran somewhat turbulently. There were many changes of 
presidents' and of ministries, and much party rancor was dis- 
played; yet in spite of all untoward circumstances the cause of the 
Republic steadily advanced, while that of the Monarchy and of 
the Empire as steadily went backward. Bourbons and Bonapartes, 
like Stuarts, went into an exile from which there was no return. 

Many of the difficulties and problems which confronted the 
Republic were legacies to it from the Monarchy and the Empire. 
The most fate-laden legacy of the war that destroyed the Empire 
was the Alsace-Lorraine matter. The deep resentment felt towards 
Germany for this dismemberment of France, together with the fear 
of further German aggression, caused the French government, in 
1 89 1, to enter into an alliance with Russia, — an alliance which, 
as we shall see, was freighted with momentous consequences.-'' 

A second legacy to the Republic was influential parties of 
Monarchists and Imperialists, who endeavored in every way to 
discredit the republican regime, and who watched for an oppor- 
tunity to set up again either the Monarchy or the Empire. 
The dangerous intrigues of these parties led in 1886 to the ex- 
pulsion from France of all the Bourbon and Bonaparte claimants 
of the throne and their direct heirs. 

A third bequest from the ancient regime was the educational 
problem, — for education of the people is the corollary of govern- 
ment by the people. Before the Revolution, education in France 

1 The Constitution of the Republic is not, hke our own, a single document, but con- 
sists of a series of laws passed at different times. It provides for a legislature of two 
chambers, a Senate and a Chamber of Deputies, a President elected for seven years by 
the chambers in a joint meeting, and a Cabinet responsible to the legislature. The suf- 
frage is universal. 

2 These are the presidents of the Republic since the resignation in 1873 of M. Thiers, 
the historian, who was the first president: Marshal MacMahon (resigned), 1S73-1S79; 
M. Grevy (resigned), 1879-1S87; M. Carnot (assassinated), 1887-1S94; M. Casimir-Perier 
(resigned), 1894-1895; M. Felix Faure (died in office), 1S95-1S99; M. Loubet (1899- 
1906) ; M. Fallieres (1906-1913) ; M. Poincare (1913-1920) ; M. Deschanel (1920- ). 

3 This dual alliance became in 1907, through the adhesion of England, the great 
Triple Entente. 



§593] THE THIRD REPUBLIC 523 

was mainly in the hands of the religious orders. The Revolution 
swept away these bodies and secularized the educational system. 
The restoration of the Monarchy brought about also the restora- 
tion of the religious orders. The system of education was now 
mixed, being in part lay and in part clerical. Among the Liberals 
a strong section demanded the suppression of the clerical schools 
and the complete secularization of education. The final outcome 
of this fight against clerical influence in education and civil mat- 
ters was a complete separation of Church and State in 1895. This 
meant the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church (and 
of the Protestant and Jewish churches as well), and the annul- 
ment of the Concordat entered into between Napoleon and the 
Pope in 1802^ (sect. 552). 

The Republic has also had troubles which can in no sense be 
regarded as an inheritance from the ancient regime. During the 
years 1 889-1 892 all France was shaken by a great scandal arising 
from the gross mismanagement and failure of a company organ- 
ized by Ferdinand de Lesseps, who had won great fame by the 
successful construction of the Suez Canal, for the digging of a 
similar canal at the Isthmus of Panama. After the expenditure 
of upwards of $260,000,000, with the work in a very unsatisfac- 
tory condition, the company became bankrupt. It then developed 
that bribery and corruption on a scale as gigantic as the under- 
taking itself had been resorted to by the promoters of the enter- 
prise. Prosecutions followed. Among those condemned to severe 
punishment was Ferdinand de Lesseps himself. He was already 
dying from age and worry when this final blow fell upon him. It 
was a pathetic ending of a career which, aside from this last de- 
plorable incident, is one of the most illustrious in modern French 
history.^ 

1 With the severance of all connection between' Church and State, the payment of 
the salaries of the clergy by the government ceased. The use of the churches is left 
free to the Catholics, but the palaces of the bishops and other ecclesiastical buildings are 
now devoted to educational and nonreligious purposes. 

2 Another unfortunate affair belonging to this period is the case of Alfred Dreyfus, 
a young Jewish captain of artillery in the French army, who became the victim of a 
shameful conspiracy and of a cruel and unjust sentence by a military court. The story is 
too long for recital here. 



524 FRANCE SINCE THE RESTORATION [§593 

As to the part taken by France in the wonderful industrial 
development of the period under review, and in recent colonial 
enterprises, particularly in the opening up to civilization of the 
continent of Africa, we shall find it more convenient to speak in 
another connection.^ With the opening of the World War of 19 14, 
the history of France merges for a time with that of Europe and 
of the world at large.- 

Selections from the Sources. Forbks, A., My Expe7-ie}ice of the War 
betioeen France and German v. Robinson, J. li., Readings in European History, 
vol. ii, chap, xxxix, pp. 536-542. For material for a systematic study of the 
period, the special student should turn to Anderson, F. ]VI., Consiitntions 
and Other Select Documents. 

Secondary Works. In most of the works cited for the preceding chapter 
will be found chapters and sections dealing with French affairs during the 
period under review. To these authorities add the following: Martin, II., 
A Popular Ilistorv of France, vols, ii (last part) and iii ; Dickinson, G. I,., 
Revolution- and Reaction in Modern France; and Lebon, A., and Pelet, P., 
France as it Is. 

For the Second Empire: P^trbes, A..,'77ie Life of Napoleon ilie T/iird. For 
brief summaries of the events of the period : Lebon, A., ISIodei'ii France, 
chaps, viii-xvi ; Adams, G. B., T/ie Gro7vth of the French iVation, chap, xviii ; 
and Hassall, A., The French People, chaps, xviii-xxi and xxiii. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The Dreyfus case: Hazen, C. D., Modern 
European Histoiy, pp. 396-400. 2. The separation of Church and State : 
Hazen, C. D., Modern European History, pp. 400-403. 3. Part taken by France 
in nineteenth-century progress: Seignobos, C, History of Contemporary 
Civilization, pp. 437-441. 

1 See Chapter XLII. - See Chapter XLIV. 



CHAPTER XXXVII 

ENGLAND FROM THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO TO THE 
WORLD WAR 

(1815-1914) 

594. The Four Chief Matters. English history during tlie 
hundred years between the battle of Waterloo and the outbreak 
of the World War embraces a multitude of events. A short 
chapter covering the entire period will possess no instructive value 
unless it reduces the great mass of facts to some sort of unity 
by placing events in relation with their causes, and thus shows 
how they are connected with a few broad national movements 
or tendencies. 

Studying the period in this way, we shall find that very many 
of its leading events may be summed up under the four follow- 
ing heads: (i) progress towards democracy; (2) extension of 
the principle of religious equality; (3). England's relations with 
Ireland; and (4) the growth of the British colonial empire. 

We shall attempt nothing more in the present chapter than to 
indicate the most prominent matters that should claim the stu- 
dent's attention along the first three lines of inquiry, reserving 
for later sections the consideration of England's colonial affairs. 

L PROGRESS TOWARDS DEMOCRACY 

595. Introductory. The English Revolution of 1688 trans- 
ferred authority from the king to the Parliament. The elective 
branch of that body, however, rested upon a very narrow elec- 
toral basis. Out of upwards of five million Englishmen who should 
have had a voice in the government, less than two hundred thou- 
sand were voters, and these were chiefly of the rich upper classes. 
The political democratizing of England during the century under 

525 



52 6 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§596 

review consists in the widening of the electorate, — in the giving 
to every intelligent and honest man a right to vote, to participate 
in the government under which he lives. 

596. Effects of the French Revolution upon Liberalism in 
England; Reform versus Revolution. The French Revolution 
at first gave a fresh impulse to liberal tendencies. The English 
Liberals watched the course of the French Republicans with the 
deepest interest and sympathy. It will be recalled how the states- 
man Fox rejoiced at the fall of the Bastille, and what auguries of 
hope he saw in that event (sect. 510). The young writers Cole- 
ridge, Wordsworth, and Southey were all infected with demo- 
cratic sentiments and inspired with a generous enthusiasm for 
political liberty and ecjuality. But the wild excesses of the French 
levelers terrified the English Liberals. There was a sudden revul- 
sion of feeling. Liberal sentiments were denounced as dangerous 
and revolutionary. 

But in a few years after the downfall of Napoleon the terrors of 
the French Revolution were forgotten. Liberal sentiments began 
to spread among the masses. The people very justly complained 
that, while the English government claimed to be a government 
of the people, they had no part in it. 

Now, it is instructive to note the different ways in which 
Liberalism was dealt with by the English government and by 
the rulers on the Continent. In the continental countries the 
rising spirit of democracy was met by cruel and despotic repres- 
sions. The people were denied by their rulers all participation 
in the affairs of government. We have seen the result of this 
policy in France, and later shall see the outcome of it in other 
continental countries. Liberalism triumphed indeed at last, but 
triumphed only through revolution. 

In England the government did not resist the popular demands 
to the point of revolution. It made timely concessions to the 
growing spirit of democracy. Hence here, instead of a series of 
revolutions, we have a series of reform measures which, gradually 
popularizing the House of Commons, at last rendered the English 
nation, not alone in name but in reality, a self-governing people. 



§597] THE REFORM BILL OF 1832 52? 

597. The Reform Bill of 1832. The first Parliamentary step 
in reform was taken in 1832. To understand this important act 
a glance backward becomes necessary. 

When, in 1265, the Commons were first admitted to Parlia- 
ment, members were called only from those cities and boroughs 
whose wealth and population fairly entitled them to representa- 
tion. In the course of time some of these places dwindled in 
population and new towns sprang up; yet the decayed boroughs 
retained their ancient privilege of sending members to Parlia- 
ment, while the new towns were left entirely without represen- 
tation. Thus Old Sarum, an ancient town now utterly decayed 
and without a single inhabitant, was represented in the Commons 
by two members. Furthermore, the sovereign, for the purpose 
of gaining influence in the Commons, had, from time to time, 
given unimportant places the right of returning members to the 
Lower House. It was inevitable that elections in these small places 
("pocket boroughs," as they were called) should almost always 
be determined by the corrupt influence of the crown or of the 
great landowners. The Lower House of Parliament was thus 
filled with the nominees of the king, or with persons who had 
bought their seats, often with little effort at concealment. At 
the same time, such large, recently grown manufacturing towns 
as Birmingham, Leeds, and Manchester had no representation 
at all in the Commons. 

Agitation was begun for the reform of this corrupt and farcical 
system of representation. The movement was greatly aided and 
given a more popular character than any earlier reform agitation 
by the great newspapers which had come into existence during 
the latter part of the eighteenth century. The contest between 
Whigs and Tories, or Liberals and Conservatives, was long and 
bitter, the Conservatives opposing all reform and denying that 
there was any necessity for it. At last public feeling became so 
strong and menacing that the Lords, who were blocking the 
measure in the Upper House, were forced to yield, and the Reform 
Bill of 1832 became a Jaw. By this act the English electoral sys- 
tem was radically changed. Eighty-six of the " rotten boroughs " 



528 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§598 

were disfranchised or semi-disfranchised, and the hundred and 
forty-two seats in the Lower House taken from them were given 
to different counties and to large towns hitherto unrepresented. 
The bill also somev^hat increased the number of electors by ex- 
tending the right of voting to all persons in the towns owning 
or leasing property of a certain value, and by lowering the prop- 
erty qualification of voters in the counties. 

The importance of this reform bill can hardly be exaggerated. 
It is the Magna Carta of English political democracy.^ 

598. The Municipal Reform Act of 1835. The government 
of the English towns of this period needed reform as urgently as 
had the British Parliament. This municipal system was a system 
inherited from the Middle Ages. Most of the towns were ruled by 
corrupt oligarchies. Long agitation for their overthrow resulted 
in the passing of the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. This act 
accomplished for the government of the cities what the Reform Bill 
of 1832 had effected for the general government of the kingdom. 

599. Chartism : the Revolutionary Year of 1848. Although 
the Reform Bill of 1832 was almost revolutionary in the princi- 
ple it established, still it went only a little way in the application 
of that principle. It admitted to the franchise the middle classes 
only. The great laboring class were given no part in the govern- 
ment. They now began an agitation characterized by much bit- 
terness, and known as Chartism, from a document called the 
" People's Charter," which embodied the reforms they desired. 
Among these were universal suffrage and vote by ballot. 

1 The reform of the House of Commons gave an impulse to legislation of an humani- 
tarian or popular character. In 1833 an act was passed in the British Commons for the 
abolition of slavery. Nearly 800,000 slaves, chiefly in the British West Indies, were freed 
at a cost to the English nation of ^20,000,000. This same year (1833) the first effective 
Factory Act was passed. This was the beginning of a long series of laws which gradually 
corrected the almost incredible abuses, particularly in connection with the employment 
of children, that had crept into the English factory system. A similar series of laws 
regulated labor in the mines. Also this same year Parliament voted an annual grant of 
^20,000 to aid in the erection of schoolhouses. This was the first step taken by the 
English government in the promotion of public education. In 1S46 England, by the 
repeal of her " corn laws," abandoned the commercial policy of protection, which favored 
the great landowners, and a'dopted that of free trade. The chief advocates of this impor- 
tant measure were Richard Cobden and John Bright. The enactment of the law was 
hastened by the blight of the potato crop in Ireland and consequent famine in the island. 



V 



600] 



THE REFORM BILL OF 1867 



529 




The agitation went on with more or less violence until 1848, in 
which year, encouraged by the revolutions then shaking almost 
every throne on the European continent, the Chartists indulged 
in riotous demonstrations, which frightened the law-abiding citi- 
zens and brought discredit upon themselves. Their organization 
now fell to pieces. The reforms, however, which they had labored 
to secure, were, in the main, 
desirable and just, and the 
most important of these re- 
forms have since been adopted 
and made a part of the Eng- 
lish constitution. 

600. The Reform Bill of 
1867 and the Education Act 
of 1870. The Reform Bill of 
1867 was simply another step 
taken by the English govern- 
ment in the direction of the 
Reform Bill of 1832. Like 
that measure, it was passed 
only after long and violent 
agitation both without and 
within the walls of ParHa- 

ment. The main effect of the bill was the extension of the right 
of voting, — the enfranchisement of the great "fourth estate." 

As after the Reform Bill of 1832, so now the attention of Par- 
liament was directed to the matter of public instruction; for all 
recognized that universal education must go along with universal 
suffrage. Three years after the passage of this second reform 
bill Parliament passed an education act (1870) which aimed to 
provide an elementary education for every child in the British 
Isles by investing the local authorities with power to establish and 
maintain schools and compel the attendance of the children. 

601. The Reform Bill of 1884. One of the conservative 
leaders, the Earl of Derby, in the discussions upon the Reform 
Bill of 1867, said, ''No doubt we are making a great experiment, 



Fig. 97. Queen Victoria as a 

Young Woman. (After a painting by 

Patridge) 



530 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§ 602 

and taking a leap in the dark." Just seventeen years after the 
passage of that bill the English people were ready to take another 
leap. But they were not now leaping in the dark. The wisdom 
and safety of admitting the lower classes to a share in the govern- 
ment had been demonstrated. 

In 1884 Mr. Gladstone, then Prime Minister, introduced and 
pushed to a successful vote a new reform bill more radical and 
sweeping in its provisions than any preceding one. It increased 
the number of voters from about three millions to live millions. 
The qualification of voters in the counties was made the same as 
that required of voters in the boroughs. Hence its effect was to 
enfranchise the great agricultural classes.^ 

602. The Reform of Rural Local Government. Parliament 
and the government of the municipalities were now fairly democ- 
ratized. The rural districts were the last to feel the influence of 
the liberal movement that was so profoundly reconstructing in 
the interest of the masses the governmental institutions of the 
United Kingdom. But the movement finally reached these, and 
the work of democratic reconstruction has been rounded out and 
completed by different acts of Parliament, which have put more 
directly into the hands of the people of each of the smaller sub- 
divisions of the realm the management of their local affairs. 

603. The "Veto" of the House of Lords abolished (i9ii). 
The most radical change in the English constitution since the 
Reform Bill of 1832 was affected in 191 1 by an Act whereby the 
legislative power of the House of Lords was limited, and thus its 
power permanently to defeat measures approved by the lower 
chamber taken away.^ The veto power, as it may be termed, 

1 The democratization of the electorate was completed, under the stress of the World 
War, by the Representation of the People Act, in 191S. This was an electoral law which 
went further than any earlier similar measure. It established substantially manhood 
suffrage, the property basis for men being virtually abandoned, and gave the vote to 
every woman thirty years of age or over "who occupies a home, without regard to value, 
or any landed property of the annual value of /$, of which she or her husband is the 
tenant." These measures doubled the electorate, adding 8,000,000, of whom 6,000,000 
were women, to the body of voters. In 1919 a woman (Lady Astor), the first in the 
history of the English Parliament, took a seat in the House of Commons. 

2 The act, which, like the Reform Bill of 1832, received the sanction of the Upper 
House only through a threatened creation of peers, provides that bills (other than certain 



§604] RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND EQUALITY 531 

of the Lords was annulled because it had been used by them to 
obstruct or defeat reform legislation initiated by the Liberals of 
the House of Commons. The particular action of the Lords 
which created the crisis was their rejection of a budget introduced 
by Lloyd George, Chancellor of the Exchequer. Increased revenue 
being needed to meet the cost of a newly inaugurated old-age 
pension policy and a larger navy, the budget provided for new 
and special taxes on land, inheritances, and large incomes. Passed 
by the Commons, the budget was rejected by the House of Lords. 
This action of the Lords was denounced by the Liberals as a vio- 
lation of the Constitution, it being held that money bills and 
taxation were matters pertaining exclusively to the jurisdiction 
of the Commons. After a bitter debate and an appeal by the 
Government to the people in a new election, the Lords finally 
yielded and passed the budget. But their action in venturing to 
obstruct the bill had so angered the Liberals of the Commons that 
they now resolved to curb effectually the power of the Lords over 
legislation, which end was reached by the act mentioned. 

This reform makes the will of the English people as expressed 
through their representatives in the House of Commons supreme 
and independent, since the veto power of the Crown fell into disuse 
more than a century ago, and the royal assent is now never with- 
held from a bill that has the sanction of Parliament. 

II. EXTENSION OF THE PRINCIPLE OF RELIGIOUS 
EQUALITY 

604. Religious Freedom and Religious Equality. Alongside 
the political movement traced in the preceding section ran a similar 
one in the religious realm. This was a growing recognition by the 
English people of the true principle of religious toleration. 

At the opening of the nineteenth century there was in England 
religious freedom, but no religious equality. That is to say, one 

bills specified) if passed by the House of Commons in three successive sessions, — a 
certain order of procedure being observed, — shall become law without the concurrence 
of the Lords. By this same act the maximum duration of Parliament was limited to 
five years instead of seven. 



532 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§ 605 

might be a Roman Catholic or a Protestant dissenter without fear 
of persecution. Dissent from- the Established Church was not un- 
lawful; but one's being a Roman Catholic or a Protestant non- 
conformist disqualified him from holding certain public offices. 
Where there exists such discrimination against any religious sect, 
or where any one sect is favored or sustained by the government, 
there of course is no religious equality, although there may be 
religious freedom. 

Progress in this direction, then, will consist in the growth of a 
really tolerant spirit, which shall lead to the removal of all civil 
disabilities from Catholics, Protestant dissenters, and Jews, and 
the placing of all sects on an absolute equality before the law. 

605. Methodism and its Effects upon Toleration. One thing 
that helped to bring prominently forward the question of emanci- 
pating nonconformists from the civil disabilities under which they 
were placed was the great religious movement known as Metho- 
dism (sect. 482). By vastly increasing the body of Protestant 
dissenters, Methodism gave new strength to the agitation for the 
repeal of the laws which bore so heavily upon them. So now 
began a series of legislative acts which made a more and more 
perfect application of the great principle of religious equality. 
We shall simply refer to two or three of the most important of 
these measures. 

606. Disabilities removed from Protestant Dissenters (i828). 
One of the earliest and most important of the acts of Parlia- 
ment in this century in recognition of the principle of religious 
equality was the repeal of the Corporation and Tests acts, in 
so far as they bore upon Protestant dissenters. These were acts 
passed in the reign of Charles II, which required every officer of 
a corporation, and all persons holding civil and military positions, 
to take certain oaths and partake of the communion according to 
the rites of the Anglican Church. It is true that these laws were 
not now strictly enforced ; nevertheless, the laws were invidious and 
vexatious, and the Protestant dissenters demanded their repeal. 

Those opposed to the repeal argued that the principle of reli- 
gious toleration did not require it. They insisted that, where 



§ 607] CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION 533 

every one has perfect freedom of worship, it is no infringement 
of the principle of toleration for the government to refuse to 
employ as a public servant one who dissents from the State 
Church. The result of the debate in Parliament was the repeal 
of such parts of the ancient acts as it was necessary to rescind in 
order to relieve Protestant dissenters. 

607. Disabilities removed from Roman Catholics (1829). 
The bill of 1828 gave no relief to Catholics. They were still 
excluded from Parliament and various civil offices by the decla- 
rations of belief and the oaths required of officeholders, — ; decla- 
rations and oaths which no good Catholic could conscientiously 
make.^ They now demanded that the same concessions be 
made them that had been granted Protestant dissenters. A threat- 
ened revolt on the part of the Irish Catholics hurried through 
Parliament the progress of jvhat was known as the " Catholic 
Emancipation Act." This law opened Parliament and all the 
offices of the kingdom, below the Crown, — save that of Regent, of 
Lord High Chancellor of England and Ireland, of Lord Deputy 
of Ireland, and a few others, — to the Catholic subjects of the 
realm. 

608. Disabilities removed from the Jews (isss). Persons 
professing the Jewish religion were still laboring under all the 
disabilities which had now been removed from Protestant dis- 
senters and Catholics. In 1858 an act (Jewish Relief Act) was 
passed by Parliament which so changed the oath required of a 
person taking office — the oath contained the words, "Upon the 
true faith of a Christian" — as to open all public positions, except 
a few special offices, to persons of the Jewish faith. 

609. Disestablishment of the Irish Church (1869). Forty 
years after the Catholic Emancipation Act the English govern- 
ment took another great step in the direction of religious equality 
by the disestablishment of the State Church in Ireland. 

The Irish have always and steadily refused to accept the religion 
which their English conquerors have somehow felt constrained to 

1 In England Roman Catholics were excluded from the privilege of voting as well as 
from the holding of office. 



534 



ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO 



[§609 



try to force upon them. The vast majority of the people are 
to-day, and ever have been, Catholics; yet up to the time where 
we have now arrived these Irish Catholics had been compelled 
to pay tithes and fees for the maintenance among them of the 

Anglican Church worship. 



.^\fj 



Meanwhile all their own 
churches, in which the great 
masses were instructed and 
cared for spiritually, had to 
be kept up by voluntary 
contributions. 

The rank injustice in thus 
forcing the Irish Catholics to 
support not merely a Church 
, in which they did not believe 
but a Church which they re- 
garded with special aversion 
and hatred as the symbol of 
their subjection and perse- 
cution, was perceived and 
declaimed against by not a 
few even among the English 
Protestants themselves. 

The proposal to do away 
with this grievance by the 
disestablishment of the State 
Church in Ireland was bit- 
terly opposed by the Con- 
servatives, headed by Lord 
Derby and Mr. Disraeli; but at length, after a memorable debate, 
the Liberals, under the lead of Bright and Gladstone, the latter 
then Prime Minister, carried the measure. This was in 1869, but 
the actual disestablishment was not to take place until the year 
1 87 1, at which time the Irish Church, ceasing to exist as a state 
institution, became a free Episcopal Church. An ancient wrong 
was thus undone. 




Fig. 9S. Lord Beacoxsfield (Dis- 
raeli), " The Courtier Premier " 
(From the monument in Westminster 
Abbey) 



§610] DISESTABLISHMENT OF STATE CHURCH 535 

610. Proposed Disestablishment of the State Church in Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Wales. The principle of religious equality 
demands, in the opinion of many Liberals, the disestablishment 
likewise of the State Church in England, Scotland,^ and Wales. 
They feel that for the government to maintain any particular sect 
is to give the state a monopoly in religion. They would have the 
churches of all denominations placed on an absolute equality. 
Especially in Scotland and Wales is the sentiment in favor of 
disestablishment very strong.^ 

III. ENGLAND'S RELATIONS WITH IRELAND 

611. Legislative Union of Great Britain and Ireland (isoo). 
The history of Ireland in the nineteenth century, like her history 
in all preceding centuries, is in the main a story of Irish grievances 
against England. These grievances have for the most part arisen 
out of three distinct yet closely related subject-matters, — religion, 
Home Rule, and the land. Concerning the religious grievances 
of the Irish and their redress we have already spoken in connec- 
tion with the general religious emancipation movement in Eng- 
land. For an understanding of the subject of Irish Home Rule 
a glance backward at Irish parliamentary history is necessary. 

Ireland, it will be recalled, secured legislative independence of 
England in 1782 (sect. 485). When, a little later. Napoleon came 
to the head of affairs in France, there was apprehension on the 
part of English statesmen lest he should utilize Irish discontent 
to secure a foothold in the islands. As a measure of precaution 
the English government resolved to get rid of the Irish Parliament. 
By wholesale bribery its members were induced to pass a sort of 
self-denying ordinance whereby the Parliament was abolished, or 
rather merged with that of Great Britain, Ireland being given repre- 
sentation at Westminster. The two islands were henceforth to bear 
the name of "The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland." 

1 The Established Church in Scotland is the Presbyterian. 

2 In 1914, just before the outbreak of the World War, the British Parliament passed a 
bill disestablishing the Church in Wales, but the carrying into effect of the bill was post- 
poned until after the end of the war. 



536 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§ 612 

612. Agitation for the Repeal of the Union. The great body 
of Irish patriots did not at the time of these transactions admit, 
nor have they at any time since admitted, the validity of the Act 
of Union whereby their Parliament was taken from them. In the 
early forties the agitation for the repeal of the Union and the 
reestablishment of their native legislature assumed, under the in- 
citement of the eloquence of the Irish patriot Daniel O'Connell, 
almost the character of a rebellion. Some years later, in the 
sixties, the agitation was carried to the point of actual insurrec- 
tion, but the movement was quickly suppressed and its leaders 
punished. 

613. Gladstone and Home Rule for Ireland. It was not long 
before the Irish question was again to the front. In i886 Wil- 
liam Ewart Gladstone became for the third time Prime Minister. 
Almost his first act was the introduction in the Commons of a 
Home Rule bill for Ireland. The main feature of this measure 
was an Irish legislature sitting at Dublin, to which was to be 
intrusted the management of all exclusively Irish affairs. 

The chief arguments urged by the opponents of the bill were 
that an Irish legislature would deal unfairly with English landlords 
in Ireland, would oppress the Protestant portion of the population, 
and, above all, in time of national distress would sever Ireland 
from the British Empire. After a long debate the bill was rejected 
by the Commons. 

In 1893 Gladstone, being then Premier for the fourth time, 
brought in a new Home Rule bill, which in its essential features 
was like his first. There followed a long and bitter debate between 
the partisans of the measure and its opponents. The bill passed 
the Commons, but was rejected by the House of Lords by an 
almost unanimous vote. 

The following year, owing to the infirmities of advanced age, 
Gladstone laid down the burdens of the premiership and retired 
from public life. He died in 1898 at the age of eighty-eight, 
and, amidst unusual demonstrations of national grief, was buried 
in Westminster Abbey. His name has a sure place among the 
great names in English history. 



§614] 



AGRARIAN LEGISLATION 



537 



614. Agrarian Troubles and Agrarian Legislation. Before 
the relief legislation, of which we shall speak directly, very much 
of Irish misery and discontent arose from absentee landlordism. 
A great part of the soil of Ireland was owned by a few hundred 
English proprietors, who represented in the main, either as heirs 




Fig. 99. William Ewart Gladstone. (A_ 



Lenbach) 



or as purchasers, those English and Scotch settlers to whom the 
lands taken away from the natives were given at the time of the 
Cromwellian and other Protestant "settlements" of the island. 
It was often the case that the agents of these absentee landlords 
dealt harshly with their tenants and exacted as rent every penny 
that could be wrung from their poverty. If a tenant made im- 
provements upon the land he tilled, and by ditching and subduing 
it increased its productive power, straightway his rent was raised. 



538 ENGLAND AFTER WATERLOO [§ 615 

If he failed to pay the higher rent, he was evicted. The records of 
" eviction " form a sad chapter in the history of the Irish peasantry. 

A long series of Irish land laws marks the efforts of the British 
Parliament to alleviate the distress of the Irish tenant farmers. 
In 1903 an Irish land-purchase bill, more sweeping and liberal 
than any preceding measure, was enacted into a law. This law 
differed from earlier ones in the provision that peasants desiring 
to buy their holdings should be aided, not merely by a government 
loan on long time and low interest, but further by the govern- 
ment's paying a part of the purchase price. This liberal 
measure, gradually carried into effect during the earlier years of 
the twentieth century, has converted the great body of Irish 
tenants into proprietors, and thus has revolutionized the relation 
of the Irish peasantry to the Irish soil. 

615. The Third Irish Home Rule Bill (1914). But land 
reforms, together with other measures of relief, proved ineffectual 
to quiet the agitation for a separate Irish Parliament. In the 
early years of the twentieth centurj' the subject was again before 
the Commons, and a third Home Rule bill was framed and intro- 
duced (1912). The "veto" power of the Lords, the rock on which 
Gladstone's last Home Rule bill had been wrecked, had been 
abolished (sect. 603), but an even greater obstacle to the success 
of the measure now was the stubborn opposition of the Protes- 
tants of Ulster, in northeast Ireland. They even threatened to revolt 
if any attempt were made to put them under the rule of an Irish 
Parliament. On the other hand, the majority of the people of 
Ireland objected strenuously to any sort of Home Rule which 
did not apply alike to all Ireland. 

Finally, after bitter debate, the bill, having been passed in 
three successive sessions of the Commons (being each time re- 
jected by the Lords), received the signature of the king;^ but be- 
fore the law became operative, the great European conflict had 
begun, and the establishment of the new regime was postponed 
until after the war.- But as the war dragged on into the third 

1 See p. 530, n. 2. 

2 This delay caused great bitterness in Ireland, which in the second year of the war 
found expression in an armed uprising, that, however, was quickly suppressed. 



§ 615] REFERENCES 539 

year the settlement of the question became urgent and the British 
government, ready to acquiesce in any plan — short of the absolute 
independence of Ireland — that the Irish themselves could agree 
upon, committed to a convention composed of representatives of 
the various parties and bodies of Irish opinion the responsibility 
of devising some scheme of government that would satisfy all 
factions and interests. The convention failed to formulate any 
plan which all Irish parties would accept, and consequently the 
end of the war found the troublesome Irish question as far as 
ever from settlement. 

Selections from the Sources. Lee, G. C, Sotnxe-Book, pp. 4S3-541 ; Ken- 
dall, E. K., Source-Book, chaps, xx and xxi ; and Colby, C. W., Selections, 
Nos. 113-117. The most important documents for the period will be found in 
Adams, G. B., and Stephens, H. M., Select Documents of English Constitutional 
Histoiy, pp. 497-555- 

Secondary Works. For Parliamentary reform : May, T. E., The Constitu- 
tional History of England, 2 vols.; Gammage, R. G., History of the Chaitist 
Move?nent, i8jy-i8s4; McCarthy, J., The Epoch of Reform; Carlyle, T., 
Chartism.; and Dickinson, G. L., The Development, of Parliatnent during the 
Nifieteenth Centuiy. 

For Irish matters : Lecky, \V. E. H., History of Ireland in. the Eighteenth 
Century, vol. v, chaps, xii and xiii (for the legislative union of England and 
Ireland) ; Two Centuries of Irish History, ibgi-iSjo, by different writers, with 
an Introduction by James Bryce ; Dicey, E., England^s Case against Home 
Rule; McCarthy, J. H., Ireland since the Union; and King, D. B., The 
Irish Question. 

Biographies : Morley, J., The Life of Richard Cobden, 2 vols., and The Life 
of William Ewait Gladstone, 3 vols. In the last biography (vol. i, pp. 635-640) 
read the remarkable letter of young Gladstone to his father on the choice of 
a profession. Brandes, G., Lord Beaconsfield. 

For the social, intellectual, and industrial life of the period : Traill, H. D., 
Social England, vol. vi ; and Cheyney, E. P., An Introdicction to the Industrial 
and Social History of England, chaps, viii-x. For a general review of the events 
of the period : McCarthy, J., History of Our Own Ti7nes (various editions). 

Topics for Class Reports, i. Irish problems — church, land, and Home 
Rule : Lavell, C. F., and Payne, C. E., Impetial England, chap. xiii. 2. Factory 
legislation regulating the employment of children and women : Cheyney, E. P., 
An Introduction to the Industrial and Social Histoty of England, pp. 244-260. 
3. Darwin, and the establishment of the theory of evolution ("one of the 
greatest, if not the greatest scientific achievement of the nineteenth century") : 
Wallace, A. R., The IVonderfil Century, chap. xiii. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII 
THE LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY 

616, Italy at the Downfall of Napoleon. The Italian peoples, 
as being the most dangerously infected with the ideas of the Revo- 
lution, were, by the reactionary Congress of Vienna, condemned 
to the most strict and ignominious slavery. The former republics 
were not allowed to restore their ancient institutions, while the 
petty principalities were handed over in almost every case to the 
tyrants or to the heirs of the tyrants who had ruled them before 
the Revolution. 

Austria, as has been stated, appropriated Venetia and Lom- 
bardy, and from northern Italy assumed to direct the affairs of 
the whole peninsula. Tuscany, IVIodena, Parma, and Lucca were 
given to princes of the House of Hapsburg. Naples was restored 
to its old Bourbon rulers. The Pope and Victor Emmanuel I, king 
of Sardinia (Piedmont), were the only native rulers, but they also 
were absolutists. The little republic of San Marino, whose very 
insignificance had protected it during the changes of the Revolu- 
tion, was the only patch of free population left in the entire pen- 
insula. The Italians had become a "Helot nation." Italy, in the 
words of Metternich, was merely "a geographical expression." 

But the Revolution had sown the seeds of liberty, and time only 
was needed for their maturing. The Cisalpine, Ligurian, Parthe- 
nopean, and Tiberine republics, short-lived though they were, had 
awakened in the people an aspiration for self-government; while 
Napoleon's kingdom of Italy, though equally delusive, had never- 
theless inspired thousands of Italian patriots with the sentiment 
of national unity. Thus the French Revolution, disappointing as 
seemed its issue, really imparted to Italy her first impulse in the 
direction of freedom and national organization. 

540 



§ 617] ARBITRARY RULE OF THE PRINCES 541 

617. Arbitrary Rule of the Restored Princes. The setting up 
of the overturned thrones meant, of course, the reinstating of the 
old tyrannies. The restored despots came back with an implacable 
hatred of everything French. The liberal constitutions of the revo- 
lutionary period were set aside, and all French institutions that 
were supposed to tend in the least to liberalism were swept away. 

In Sardinia, King Victor Emmanuel I, the " royal Rip Van 
Winkle," instituted a most extreme reactionary policy. Nothing 
that bore the French stamp, nothing that had been set up by 
French hands, was allowed to remain. The monks were given 
back their monasteries, which had been converted into factories, 
colleges, and hospitals. Even the French furniture in the royal 
palace at Turin was thrown out of the windows, and the French 
plants in the royal gardens were pulled up root and branch. Travel 
over the Mont Cenis road, constructed by Napoleon, was dis- 
couraged, in order that this monument of French genius might 
be forgotten. 

618. The Carbonari: Uprising of 1820-1821. The natural 
result of the arbitrary rule of the restored princes was deep and 
widespread discontent. An old secret organization, the members 
of which were known as the Carbonari (charcoal burners), formed 
the nucleus about which gathered the elements of disaffection. 

In 1820, incited by the revolution in Spain, the Carbonari 
raised an insurrection in Naples and forced King Ferdinand to 
grant his Neapolitan subjects a constitution. But Prince Metter- 
nich interfered to mar their plans. Sixty thousand Austrian troops 
were sent to crush the revolutionary movement; the liberal con- 
stitution was suppressed, Ferdinand reinstated, and everything 
put back on the old footing. 

Meanwhile a similar revolution was running its course in Pied- 
mont. King Victor Emmanuel I, rather than yield to the demands 
of his people for a constitution, gave up his crown and was suc- 
ceeded by his brother Charles Felix, who, by threatening to call 
to his aid the Austrian army, compelled his subjects to cease their 
clamor about kings ruling not by the grace of God but by the will 
of the people. 



542 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§ 619 

The suppression of the Hberal uprisings seemed to Metternich 
the sure pledge of divine favor. He writes exultantly: "I see the 
dawn of a better day. . . . Heaven seems to will that the world 
should not be lost." 

619. The Revolution of 1830-1831. For just ten years all 
Italy lay in sullen vassalage to Austria. Then the revolutionary 
years of 1 830-1 831 witnessed a repetition of the scenes of 1820- 
182 1. The center of the revolution was the Papal States. But 
the presence of Austrian troops, who, " true to their old prin- 
ciple of hurrying with their extinguishers to any spot in Italy 
where a crater opened," had poured into central Italy, resulted in 
the speedy quenching of the flames of the insurrection. 

620. The Three Parties. Twice now had Austrian armies 
defeated the aspirations of the Italians for national unity and 
freedom. Italian hatred of these foreign intermeddlers who were 
causing them to miss their destiny grew ever more intense, and 
"Death to the Germans!" as the Austrians were called, became 
the watch cry that united all the peoples of the peninsula. 

But while united in their fierce hatred of the Austrians, the 
Italians were divided in their views respecting the best plan for 
national organization. One party wanted a confederation of the 
various states; a second party wished to see Italy a constitutional 
monarchy with the king of Sardinia at its head; while still a third, 
known as "Young Italy," wanted a republic. 

621. Joseph Mazzini, the Patriot and Prophet. The leader 
of the third or republican party was the patriot Joseph Mazzini. 
Mazzini was not a narrow nationalist. He recognized the uni- 
versal character of the democratic revolution. The people were 
oppressed not only in Italy but in Spain, in Portugal, in Hungary, 
in Poland, in Russia, in Turkey, — almost everywhere, in truth. 
Their cause was a common cause. In opposition to the Holy 
Alliance of the princes formed with aim to oppress, there must be 
a Holy Alliance of the peoples formed with aim to emancipate. 
The French Revolution, he said, had proclaimed the liberty, 
equality, and fraternity of individual men; the new revolution 
should proclaim the liberty, equality, and fraternity of nations. 



§622] 



THE REVOLUTION OF 1848 



543 



In this great work of the emancipation and unification of the 
world, Italy was to be head and guide of the nations. To her 
this post of leadership was assigned by virtue of her leadership 
in the past. Once pagan Rome organized and ruled the world. 
Then papal Rome organized and ruled it for a thousand years. 
Now a third world union was to be formed, and of this union of 
the free and federated nations Italy, Italy as a republic, was 
to be center and head. The first Rome was the Rome of the 
Caesars; the second was the Rome of 
the Popes; the third was to be the 
Rome of the Italian People. 

Such was Mazzini's interpretation 
of the drama of world history. Such 
was his splendid ideal. Through 
kindling the enthusiasm of the Italian 
youth, awakening the sentiment of 
patriotism, and keeping alive the 
spirit of insurrection Mazzini ren- 
dered a great service to the cause of 
Italian liberation and union. 

622. The Revolution of 1848-1849. 
After the suppression of the uprising 
of 1830 until the approach of the 
memorable year 1848, Italy lay rest- 
less under the heel of her oppressor. The republican movements 
throughout Europe which characterized that year of revolutions 
encouraged the Italian patriots in another attempt to achieve 
independence and nationality. Everywhere throughout the pen- 
insula they rose against their despotic rulers. But through the 
intervention of the Austrians and the French this third Italian 
revolution was brought to naught. This interference by the 
French in Italian affairs was prompted by jealousy of Austria 
and the desire of Louis Napoleon, by upholding the Pope, to win 
the good will of the Roman Catholic clergy in France. 

Much, however, had been gained. The patriots had been taught 
the necessity of united action. Henceforward all were more 




\ 



Fig. 100. King Victor Em- 
manuel II 



544 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§623 



inclined to look upon the constitutional kingdom of Sardinia^ as 
the only possible basis and nucleus of a free and united Italy. 

623. Victor Emmanuel II, Count Cavour, and Garibaldi. 
Sardinia was a state which had gradually grown into power in the 
northwest corner of the peninsula. The throne was at this time 
held by Victor Emmanuel II (1849-1878), the only constitutional 
ruler in Italy. To him it was that the hopes of the Italian patriots 
now turned. Nor were these hopes to be disappointed. Victor 

Emmanuel was the destined liberator 
of Italy, or perhaps it would be more 
correct to say that his was the name 
in which the achievement was to be 
effected by the wise policy of his great 
minister Count Cavour and the reck- 
less daring of the national hero 
Garibaldi. 

Count Cavour was one of those 
great men who during this formative 
period in the life of the European 
peoples have earned the title of 
Nation Makers. He was lacking in 
oratorical and poetic gifts. "I can- 
not make a sonnet," he said, '^but I 
can make Italy," — an utterance sug- 
gested doubtless by that of the Athenian statesman (Themistocles) 
who boasted that though '' he knew nothing of music and song, he 
did know how of a mean city to make a great one." Cavour was 
the real maker of modern Italy. 

Garibaldi, "the hero of the red shirt," the knight-errant of 
Italian independence, was a most remarkable character. Though 
yet barely past middle life, he had led a career singularly crowded 
with varied experience and romantic adventures. Because of his 
violent republicanism he had already been twice exiled from Italy. 

624. Sardinia in the Crimean War. In 1855, in pursuance of 
a far-sighted policy, Cavour sent a Sardinian contingent to aid 

1 Sardinia had received a constitution in 1848. 




Fig. 1 01. Count Cavuuk 
(From an engraving) 



§ 625] CAVOUR AND THE WAR WITH AUSTRIA 545 

England and France against Russia in the Crimean War (sect. 
651), with the two chief aims of giving Sardinia a standing among 
the powers of Europe, and of earning the gratitude of England and 
France, so that the Italians in their future struggles with Austria 
should not have to fight their battles alone. 

A little incident in the trenches of the allies before Sevastopol 
shows in what spirit the Sardinians had gone to the war. A soldier, 
covered with mud and wearied with the everlasting digging, com- 
plained to his superior officer. "Never mind," was the consoling 
reply; "it is with this mud that Italy is to be made." 

At the Treaty of Paris, which closed the Crimean War, the 
representatives of Sardinia sat for the first time as peers among 
peers at a congress of the European states. Nothing was actually 
done for Italy by the Paris commissioners ; nevertheless, much had 
been gained. Cavour's bold policy had called the attention of 
Europe to the intolerable situation of things in the peninsula, and 
had, moreover, secured for Sardinia the right to speak for the 
whole of Italy. All this foreshadowed the time, now near at hand, 
when Italy, free and united under the constitutional crown of 
Sardinia, should be counted among the great powers of Europe. 

625. Cavour prepares for War with Austria. After the Peace 
of Paris, Cavour continued the vigorous domestic policy which 
he had adopted for Sardinia with the aim of developing her mate- 
rial resources and thus preparing her for great exertions. The 
most notable undertaking which he persuaded the Sardinian gov- 
ernment to enter upon was the tunneling of the Alps beneath 
Mt. Cenis, in order that Sardinia might be brought into commercial 
intercourse with the north of Europe. "If we are to become great," 
he said, "we must do this. The Alps must come down." 

Another part of Cavour's policy was to cultivate the friendship 
of the French Emperor Napoleon III. In a secret meeting with 
the Emperor he received from him a promise that a French army 
would, when the favorable moment arrived, aid the Sardinians in 
driving the Austrians out of Italy. In this proffer of help the 
French Emperor was actuated less by gratitude for the aid of the 
Sardinian contingent in the Crimean War than by a desire to 



546 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§ 626 

lessen the power of Austria in Italy and to replace it by French 
influence, and to secure Savoy and Nice, which were to be 
France's reward for her intervention in Sardinia's behalf. 

626. The Austro-Sardinian War (i859-i86o). Sardinia now 
began to arm. Austria, alarmed at these demonstrations, called 
upon Sardinia to disarm immediately upon threat of war. Cavour 
eagerly accepted the challenge. The French armies joined those 
of Sardinia. The two great victories of Magenta and Solferino^ 
drove the Austrians out of Lombardy and behind the famous 
Quadrilateral, consisting of four strong fortresses, which sheltered 
Venetia. Just at this juncture the menacing attitude of Prussia 
and other German states, which were alarmed at the prospective 
aggrandizement of France, and the rapid spread of the revolu- 
tionary movement in Italy, which foreshadowed the union of all 
the states of the peninsula in a single kingdom (something which 
Louis Napoleon did not wish to see consummated),- — ^this new 
situation of things, in connection with other considerations, caused 
the French Emperor to draw back and to enter upon negotiations 
of peace with the Austrian Emperor Francis Joseph at Villafranca. 

The outcome was that Austria retained Venice but gave up to 
Sardinia the larger part of Lombardy. The Sardinians were bit- 
terly disappointed that they did not get Venetia, and loudly ac- 
cused the French Emperor of having betrayed their cause, since 

1 It was an impulse from the battlefield of Solfeiino that brought into existence the 
Red Cross organization. A French-Swiss gentleman named Henri Dunant, whom chance 
brought to the field after the battle, was so deeply impressed by the sufferings of the 
wounded, many of whom from lack of surgeons and nurses lay for days on the field 
without attention, that he was moved to devote himself to rousing public opinion and 
forming an organization to care for the stricken in battle. Through his efforts twelve 
nations were brought to sign what is known as the Geneva Convention of 1864, which 
marks the definite founding of the Red Cross Society. Its emblem is a red cross on a 
white ground. The society now renders humanitarian ser\'ice not only in time of war 
but also in time of peace, giving relief in cases of fire, flood, pestilence, famine, earth- 
quakes, and other emergencies of every kind. Henri Dunant received the Nobel prize in 
1901. He died in 1910. 

2 Napoleon III did not wish for a united Italy any more than he wished for a united 
Germany. His aim was to create a kingdom in northern Italy which would exclude 
Austria from the peninsula and then to bring about a confederation of all the Italian 
states under the presidency of the Pope. Italy thus reconstructed would, he conceived, 
be fain to look to the French Emperor as her champion and patron. 



§ 627] ACCESSIONS TO SARDINIAN KINGDOM 547 

at the outset he had promised them that he would free Italy 
from the "Alps to the Adriatic." But Sardinia found compensa- 
tion for Venice in the accession of Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and 
the Romagna, the peoples of which states, having discarded their 
old rulers, besought Victor Emmanuel to permit them to unite 
themselves to his kingdom. Thus, as the result of the war, the 
king of Sardinia had added to his subjects a population of seven 
millions. A long step had been taken in the way of Italian unity 
and freedom. 

But while the Sardinian kingdom was thus vastly extended to 
the east and to the south, it was cut away a little on the west. 
Savoy and Nice, the former "the cradle of the Savoyard House," 
were given, according to previous agreement, as the price of her 
services, to France. The Italian patriots mourned the loss of 
these provinces as the French mourned the loss of Alsace and 
Lorraine. 

627. Sicily and Naples, with Umbria and the Marches, 
added to Victor Emmanuel's Kingdom (1860). The adven- 
turous daring of the hero Garibaldi now added Sicily and Naples, 
and indirectly Umbria and the Marches, to the possessions of 
Victor Emmanuel, and changed the kingdom of Sardinia into the 
kingdom of Italy. 

These momentous events took place under the following cir- 
cumstances. In i860 the subjects of the Bourbon Francis II, 
king of the Two Sicilies, rose in revolt. Victor Emmanuel and 
his minister Cavour were in sympathy with the movement, yet 
dared not send the insurgents aid through fear that such action 
would arouse the jealousy of Austria and of France. But Gari- 
baldi, untrammeled by any such considerations and favored by 
the connivance of the Sardinian government, having gathered a 
band of a thousand volunteers, set sail from Genoa for Sicily, 
where upon landing he assumed the title of Dictator of Sicily for 
Victor Emmanuel, King of Italy, and quickly drove the troops of 
King Francis out of the island. Then crossing to the mainland 
he marched triumphantly to Naples, whose inhabitants hailed him 
tumultuously as their deliverer. 



548 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§ 628 



Count Cavour saw that the time had now come for the Sar- 
dinian government to assume guidance of the revolutionary move- 
ment. The papal territories of Umbria and the Marches were 
accordingly occupied by a Sardinian army. Meanwhile, a plebis- 
cite, or popular vote, having been ordered, Umbria, the Marches, 
Naples, and Sicily voted almost unanimously for annexation to 
the Sardinian kingdom. 

Thus was another long step taken in the unification of Italy. 
Nine millions more of Italians had become the subjects of Victor 

Emmanuel. There was now 
wanting to complete the union 
only Venetia and Rome, to- 
gether with some Italian lands 
on the north and at the head 
of the Adriatic. 

628. Venetia added to the 
Kingdom (isee). The Seven 
Weeks' War (sect. 642), which 
broke out between Prussia and 
Austria in 1866, afforded the 
Italian patriots the opportu- 
nity for which they were watch- 
ing to make Venetia a part of 
the Italian kingdom. Victor 
Emmanuel formed an alliance 
with the King of Prussia, one of the conditions of which was 
that no peace should be made with Austria until she had sur- 
rendered Venetia to Italy. The speedy issue of the war added 
the coveted territory to the dominions of Victor Emmanuel. 

629. Rome becomes the Capital (i87o). After the liberation 
of Naples and Sicily the city of Turin, the old capital of the Sar- 
dinian kingdom, was made the capital of the new kingdom of 
Italy. In 1865 the seat of government was transferred to Flor- 
ence. But the Italians looked forward to the time when ^Rome, 
the ancient mistress of the peninsula and of the world, should be 
their capital. The power of the Pope, however, was upheld by 




Fig. 102. 



Garibaldi. (From an 
engraving) 



§ 630] END OF TEMPORAL POWER OF PAPACY 549 

the French, who maintained a garrison in the Papal States from 
1849 to 1870, and this made it impossible for the Italians to 
have their will in this matter without a conflict with France. 

But events soon gave the coveted capital to the Italian govern- 
ment. In 1870 came the sharp, quick war between France and 
Prussia, and the French troops at Rome were hastily summoned 
home. Upon the overthrow of the French Empire and the 
establishment of the republic, Victor Emmanuel was informed 
that France would no longer sustain the papal power. The Italian 
government at once gave notice to the Pope that Rome would 
henceforth be considered a portion of the kingdom of Italy, and 
forthwith an Italian army entered the city, which by a vote of 
almost a hundred to one resolved to cast in its lot with that of 
the Italian nation. July 2, 1871, Victor Emmanuel himself en- 
tered Rome and took up his official residence there. Since then 
the Eternal City has been the seat of the national government.^ 
. 630. End of the Temporal Power of the Papacy. The occu- 
pation of Rome by the Italian government marked the end of the 
temporal power of the Pope, and the end of an ecclesiastical 
state, the last in Europe, which from long before Charlemagne 
had held a place among the temporal powers of Europe, and 
during all that period had been a potent factor in the political 
affairs not only of Italy but of almost the whole continent. The 
papal troops, with the exception of a few guardsmen, were dis- 
banded. The Vatican palace and some other buildings with their 
grounds were reserved to the Pope as a place of residence, to- 
gether with a yearly allowance of 3,000,000 lire (about $600,000). 
By a statute known as the Law of the Papal Guarantees (1871), 
the Pope was secured in the free exercise of his spiritual functions. 
These arrangements have subsisted down to the present time 
(1919). Under them the Pope is not to be regarded as a subject 
of the Italian government but rather as a sovereign residing in 
Rome. Like a sovereign he has the right to send and to receive 

1 Victor Emmanuel II died in 1878, and his son came to the throne with the title of 
Humbert I. He was assassinated in 1900, and was succeeded by his only son, Victor 
Emmanuel III. 



550 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§ 631 

embassies. His person is inviolable. No Italian officer may enter 
the Vatican or its grounds, which the Italian government respects 
the same as though they were foreign territory.^ 

631. The Vatican and the Quirinal:-^ the Roman Question. 
The popes" have steadily refused to recognize the legitimacy of 
the act whereby they were deprived of the temporal government 
of Rome and the Papal States, and have protested against it by 
refraining from setting foot outside the gardens of the Vatican, 
by refusing to accept the annuity provided for them, and in 
various other ways. 

The partisans of the Papacy maintain that the act of 'dispos- 
session was an act of impious spoliation, and that there can be 
no settlement of the "Roman Question" save through the restora- 
tion of the Pope to his former status as an independent temporal 
sovereign. They contend that only through the possession of 
temporal power can the Pope be secure in his independence as 
the spiritual head of Roman Catholic Christendom. They de- 
mand, therefore, the retrocession to the Holy See of at least the 
city of Rome, — maintaining that either Turin or Florence or 
Venice or Naples would serve as well as Rome for the seat of 
the Italian government. 

To these censures and demands of the papal party the friends 
of the monarchy reply that the extension of the authority of 
the Italian government over Rome and the papal territories was 
justified by the modern principle of nationality, which recognizes 
in every people the right to choose their form of government 

1 It is a matter worthy of note that just a few months before the loss of his temporal 
sovereignty a great ecumenical council of the Catholic Church (the Vatican Council of 
1869-1S70) had by a solemn vote proclaimed the doctrine of papal infallibility, which 
declares the decisions of the Pope, when speaking rx cathedra^ " on questions of faith 
and morals," to be infallible. 

2 The Palace of the Quirinal at Rome contains the oiTices of the Italian government, 
and thus the term Qiih-hial typifies the secular as the term Vatkatt typifies the spiritual 
power in Italy. 

8 Pius IX died in 1S7S and was followed in the pontificate by Leo XIII, who died 
July 20, 1903, at the patriarchal age of ninety-three, after having won a place among the 
greatest and the best of the popes. The College of Cardinals elected as his successor 
Cardinal Joseph Sarto, Patriarch of Venice, who assumed the title of Pius X. He died 
in 19 14 and was succeeded by Benedict XV. 



§ 632] 



REFORM AND PROGRESS 



5SI 



and to shape their own destiny. As to the removal of the seat 
of the Italian government from Rome to some other city of 
the peninsula, they maintain that the force of unique historical 
associations, and precious race traditions and memories, make 
Rome the logical and inevitable capital of a united Italy. 

632. Reform and Progress. 
The antagonism between the 
Vatican and the Quirinal, in 
connection with other hin- 
drances, has tended to retard 
Italy's progress under the new 
regime. Yet very much has 
been accomplished since the 
winning of independence and 
nationality. Brigandage, an 
element of the bad heritage 
from the time of servitude, op- 
pression, and disunion, has 
been in a great degree sup- 
pressed; railways have been 
built; the Alps have been tun- 
neled; the healthfulness of the 
Campagna and other districts 
has been increased by exten- 
sive systems of drainage, and 
regions long given over to deso- 
lation have been made habit- 
able and productive; the dense ignorance and the deep moral 
degradation of the masses, particularly in the southern parts of 
the peninsula, — another element of the evil inheritance from the 
past, — have been in a measure overcome and relieved by a public 
system of education; and Rome has been rebuilt, and from the 
position of a mean provincial town raised to a place among the 
great capitals of modern Europe. 

As to the progress made during the last fifty years in the 
development of the sentiment of nationality, upon the strength 




Fig. 103. Pope Benedict XV 
(From a photograph by Rtischin) 



552 LIBERATION AND UNIFICATION OF ITALY [§632 

of which depends the peace, permanency, and prosperity of the 
new kingdom of Italy, a comparatively recent disaster furnishes 
a milestone by which to measure advance. In 1902 the great 
historic campanile which dominated St. Mark's in Venice fell 
in a pathetic heap of ruins. Every city of the peninsula, says a 
chronicler of the event, mourned just as if the tower had been 
its own, — " and then they opened a subscription." Had the 
catastrophe happened a few decades earlier Venice would have 
had to restore her own bell tower; but Italy is to-day a Nation, 
and the misfortune which befalls any Italian city afflicts all alike.^ 
In 191 5 Italy was drawn into the maelstrom of the World War 
then raging, so that here her story properly becomes a part of 
the story of that tremendous struggle. 

Selections from the Sources. Mazzini, Life a)id Writings (should be 
read by all those whose souls, to use one of Mazzini's own phrases, need to 
be retempered in abhorrence of tyranny). Della Rocca, The Autobiography 
of a Vete?-an, iSoy—iSgj (a narrative of simplicity and charm). Dunant, H., 
The Origin of the Red Cross (" Un Souvenir de Solferino"). Robinson, J. H., 
JieaJiiigs ill European History, vol. ii, pp. 572-580. 

Secondary Works. Probyn, J. W., Italy : from the Fail of iVafoleon /, /;/ 
iSi^, to the Year i8go, and Stillman, W. J., The Union of Italy, iSij-i8gs- 
(The first of these affords the best short account for young readers; the 
second is the best for a careful study.) Martinengo Cesaresco, The Libera- 
tion of Italy, iSi^-iSyo ; also by the same writer, Cavour. Thayer, W. R., 
The Dazvn of Italian Independence, 2 vols. Mazade, Charles de. Life of 
Cavour. DiCEY, E., Victor Enimaiiuel. King, B., Mazzini. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The political reaction in Italy and Count 
Cavour: White, A. D., Seven Great Statesmen, pp. 319-388. 2. The alliance 
between Italy and France : Latimer, E. W., Italy in the Alneteenth Centuiy, 
chap. X. • 

1 In 190S the most destructive earthquake that has visited Europe since the Lisbon 
earthquake of 1755 occurred in Calabria and Sicily, resulting in the estimated loss of 
over 70,000 lives. The Sicilian city of Messina was wholly destroyed, a great part of its 
inhabitants being buried in its ruins. 



CHAPTER XXXIX 
THE MAKING OF THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 

633. Formation of the German Confederation (1815). The 
creation of the new German Empire was the most important 
matter in the nineteenth-century history of Europe, although it 
was not until illumined by later events that the fateful significance 
of the rise of this new state among the European states was dis- 
cerned even by the most far-seeing statesmen. The story of the 
making of this new nation and imperial power, so far as it will be 
narrated in the present chapter, begins with the Congress of 
Vienna.^ That body reorganized Germany as a Confederation, 
with the Emperor of Austria as President of the league. The 
union consisted of the Austrian Empire and the four kingdoms 
of Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wiirtemberg, besides various 
principalities and free cities — in all, thirty-nine states. A 
Diet formed of delegates from the several states, and sitting at 
Frankfort-on-the-Main, was to settle all questions of dispute 
arising between members of the Confederation, and to determine 
matters of general concern. 

The articles of union, in a spirit of concession to the growing 
sentiment of the times, provided that all sects of Christians should 
enjoy equal toleration, and that every state should establish a 
representative form of government. 

634. Defects and Weaknesses of the Confederation. The 
ties uniting the various states of this Confederation could hardly 
have been more lax. In this respect the league resembled that first 
formed by the American states under the Articles of Confedera- 
tion. One chief defect of the constitution of the league lurked in 
the provisions concerning the Federal Diet. The unwillingness of 

^ For a word as to how Napoleon's reconstruction of the Germanic body laid the 
basis of German unity, see sect. 559. 

553 



554 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§635 

the several states to surrender any part of their sovereignty had 
led to the insertion of the rule that no measure of first importance 
should be adopted by the Diet save by a unanimous vote. The 
inevitable result of this provision was that no measure of first 
importance was ever passed by the assembly, which became 
throughout Europe a byword for hopeless inefficiency. 

Another defect in the federal government was that, as in the 
case of the American Federation, there existed no effective 
machinery for carrying out the acts of the Federal Diet. These 
amounted practically to nothing more than recommendations to 
the rulers of the several states, who paid no heed whatsoever to 
them unless they chanced to be in line with their own policies 
or inclinations.^ 

But what contributed more than all else to render the federal 
scheme wholly unworkable was the presence in the league of two 
powerful and mutually jealous states, Austria and Prussia, neither 
of which was willing that the other should have predominance in 
the affairs of the Confederation. Of these two rival states Prussia, 
though at first she yielded nominal precedence to Austria, which 
had a great past and enjoyed a vast prestige at the European 
courts, was in reality the stronger state. Her strength lay par- 
ticularly in the homogeneous, essentially German, character of 
her population. Austria was inherently weak because of the 
mixed non-German character of most of the territories that had 
been gradually united under the rule of the Hapsburgs. The 
greater part of their lands lay outside of the German Confeder- 
ation and contained nearly twenty-five million Slavs, Magyars, 
Italians, and other non-German subjects. 

This difference in the character of the populations of Prussia 
and the Austrian Empire foreshadowed their divergent destinies, — 
foreshadowed that Austria should lose and that Prussia should 
gain the leadership in German affairs. 

635. The Dual Movement towards Freedom and Union. 
For a half century after the Congress of Vienna the history of 
Germany is the history of a dual movement, or perhaps it would 
be better to say two movements, one democratic and the other 



§ 636] THE REVOLUTIONS OF 1830 555 

national in character. The aim of the first movement was the 
estabHshment -of representative government in the different states 
of the Confederation; the aim of the second was German unity. 
These movements were essentially the same as those which we 
have seen creating in the Italian peninsula a free and united Italy. 
By what methods they were carried on here in Germany and in 
what measure their aims were attained will appear in the following 
pages. 

636. The Revolutions of 1830; Some Gains for Constitu- 
tional Government. There were a few liberal-minded princes 
among the German rulers; but in general the faces of these princes 
were turned towards the past. They opposed all changes that would 
give the people any part in the government, and clung to the old 
order of things. We have seen what were the consequences of 
the reactionary policy of the Bourbons in France and of the 
despots in Italy. Events ran exactly the same course in Germany. 
When the news of the July Revolution in Paris (sect. 589) 
spread beyond the Rhine, a sympathetic thrill shot through Ger- 
many, and in places the Liberal party made threatening demon- 
strations against their reactionary rulers. In several of the minor 
states constitutions were granted. Thus a little was gained for 
free political institutions, though after the flutter of the revolu- 
tionary years the princes again took up their reactionary policy, 
and under the influence of Metternich did all in their power to 
check the popular movement and to keep governmental matters 
out of the hands of the people. In some instances the constitu- 
tions already granted were annulled or their articles were dis- 
regarded. 

637. Formation of the Customs Union; First Step towards 
German Unity (i828-i836). It was just at this revolutionary 
epoch that the first step was taken in the formation of a real 
German nation through the creation of what is known as the 
Customs LTnion. This was a sort of commercial treaty binding 
those states that became parties to it — by the year 1836 almost 
all the states of the Confederation save Austria had become mem- 
bers of the league ^ — to adopt among themselves the policy of 



556 



THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 



[§638 



free trade; that is, there were to be no duties levied on goods 
passing from one state of the Union to another belonging to it. 

The greatest good resulting from the Union was that it taught 
the people to think of a more perfect national union. And as 
Prussia was the promoter of the trade confederation, it accus- 
tomed the smaller states to look to her as their head and chief. 

638. The Uprisings of 
1848 ; Fateful Consequences 
of the Failure of the Lib- 
eral Movement. In 1848 
news flew across the Rhine 
of the uprising in France 
against the reactionary gov- 
ernment of Louis Philippe. 
The intelligence kindled a 
flame of excitement through- 
out Germany. The Liber- 
als everywhere arose and 
demanded constitutional gov- 
ernment. Especially in Aus- 
tria did affairs assume a 
most threatening aspect.^ 
Metternich was obliged to 
flee the country, so intense 
was the feeling against him. The Emperor Ferdinand I abdicated 
in favor of his nephew Francis Joseph, who granted the people 
a constitution. 

At the Prussian capital Berlin there was serious fighting in the 
streets between the people and the soldiers, and the excitement 
was not quieted until the king, Frederick William IV, assured 
the people that their demands for constitutional government 
should be granted. In fulfillment of this promise the king granted 




Fig. 104. Louis Kossuth 



1 The most serious trouble was in Hungary. Led by the distinguished statesman 
and orator Louis Kossuth, the Hungarians rose in revolt and declared their independ- 
ence of the Austrian crown (April 14, 1S49). They made a noble fight for freedom, but 
were overpowered by the united Austrian and Russian armies. 



§ 638] THE UPRISING OF 1848 557 

a constitution, which provided for a parliament of two chambers, 
and took an oath to rule in accord with its provisions (1850). 

Thus the Revolution of 1 848-1 849 seemed on the whole to have 
secured distinct gains for popular government in Germany. These 
gains, however, proved to be either impermanent or illusive. 
After the excitement of the revolutionary movement had passed 
away, many of the lesser princes annulled wholly or in part the 
constitutions they had granted. The Austrian constitution was 
withdrawn in 1851. The Prussian constitution was so framed as 
to leave Prussia, though now in form a constitutional state, still 
in reality an absolute instead of a limited monarchy.^ In 1856 the 
Hohenzollern Frederick William, who had granted the constitution, 
was a plaintiff in a Missouri court (U. S.). In the statement of 
his case he makes the following declaration of his status as king 
of Prussia: ''The plaintiff states that he is absolute monarch of 
the kingdom of Prussia, and as king thereof is the sole government 
of that country; that he is unrestrained by any constitution or 
law, and that his will, expressed in due form, is the only law 
of that country, and is the only legal power there known to exist 
as law."- 

The failure of the democratic movement of the revolutionary 
years 1848- 1849 ^^'^ the virtual triumph of autocracy in Prussia 
and Austria had momentous consequences for Europe.^ It created 

1 The grant of universal suffrage was rendered futile by an astutely devised electoral 
system based on property, known as the three-class system of voting, which gave the 
small wealthy class, always zealous supporters of the pretensions of the Crown, more 
than half of the seats in the lower house of the national assembly (the La7tdtag). 

2 King of Prussia -'. Kuepper's Admr., 22 Missouri Reports (1S56), p. 550; quoted 
by Scott, A Sii7~c'cy of Iniernational Relations betivecn the United States and Getinany 
(1917), p. xlii. 

3 The failure of the liberal constitutional movement in the separate German states 
was rendered more complete by the failure at this same time of the movement to bind 
the various states in a closer national union with a genuinely liberal constitution. To 
this end there had met in Frankfort, May 18, 1848, an assembly, like the Constituent 
Assembly of 1789 in France, charged with the duty of framing a national constitution 
for Germany. Unfortunately nothing was accomplished by the meeting. This made 
hopeless the outlook for liberalism in Germany. Many of the leaders of the popular 
movement found in America an asylum from the tyranny at home. 

It is worth noting that just at this time, when the German states were endeavoring 
to form a real national union, Switzerland became a true federal state. The Congress of 



558 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 639 

a fatal schism and left the continent — half democratic, half auto- 
cratic — a house divided against itself. This cleavage foreshadowed 
the great tragedy which overwhelmed Europe in 19 14. 

639. Bismarck, the Unifier of Germany. In the year 1861 
Frederick William IV of Prussia died, and his brother, already an 
old man of sixty-three yet destined to be for almost a generation 
the central figure in the movement for German unity, came to the 
Prussian throne as William I. He soon called to his side Otto 
von Bismarck as Premier and Minister of Foreign Affairs. Bis- 
marck was a man of great genius, but he was autocratic in his 
ideas and methods, and — as revealed especially in his Rcminis- 
cences, dictated by himself after his dismissal from office by Em- 
peror William II — thoroughly unscrupulous. His appearance at 
the head of the Prussian government marks an epoch in history. 

Bismarck held that it was Prussia's mission to effect the uni- 
fication of the German Fatherland. This work he was convinced 
could be accomplished only through the Prussian royal house. 
He believed that to allow the royal power in Prussia to be re- 
duced to the condition of the royal power in England would 
be to destroy the sole instrument by means of which German 
unity could be wrought out. This conviction determined Bis- 
marck's attitude towards the Prussian Parliament when it came 
in conflict with the royal power. He flouted it and trampled it 
under foot. He was known as the " Parliament tamer." Naturally 
he was distrusted and hated by the Liberals. 

As to the vexed question between Austria and Prussia, Bismarck 
had a fixed idea as to how that should be settled, — " by blood and 

Vienna had reconstructed the Swiss Confederation in such a way as to leave the cantons 
united by lax federal ties, like those of the German Confederation. As in Germany, 
so here, there arose a party whose ideal was Swiss unity; that is to say, a stronger and 
more centralized federal government. To prevent this proposed centralization of power 
and to preserve cantonal sovereignty seven of the Catholic cantons formed an alliance 
knovi'n as the Sondcrbitnd, or Separate League. Civil war followed (the war of the Sonder- 
bund, 1847). The Catholic party was defeated, and the federal constitution was revised 
so as to convert the loose confederation of cantons into a strong federal state, which 
in some respects is like that of the United States. This made Switzerland a real nation, 
one of the most typical and interesting of the federal states of the world. In 1874 a 
new constitution was framed, which still further increased the power of the federal 
government. 



§ 640] REFORM OF THE PRUSSIAN ARMY 559 

iron." Austria's power and influence must be destroyed and she 
herself forcibly expelled from Germany before the German states 
could be remolded into a real national union. 

640. The Reform of the Prussian Army; Bismarck's Con- 
flict with the Prussian Parliament. It had been King William's 
policy to reform and strengthen the Prussian army. He had 
selected Bismarck as his prime minister because he knew he 
would carry out this policy in the face of the opposition of the 
Prussian House of Representatives. That body would not vote 
the necessary taxes. Bismarck held that it was their duty to 
make the necessary appropriations for the army and when they 
persisted in withholding grants of money he, backed by his 
sovereign and the House of Peers, raised without parliamentary 
sanction what money he needed for his army reforms. 

It was ^ bold and dangerous procedure, and has been likened 
to that followed by Charles I and Strafford in England. For- 
tunately for King William and his imperious minister the policy 
proved highly successful, issuing in Prussia's military predomi- 
nance in Germany and in German unity, — and the "Parliament 
tamer" and his master escaped the fate of the English king 
and his minister. 

But there were remote evil results of Bismarck's action which 
no one at that time could have foreseen. It fixed definitely the 
autocratic character of German Imperialism, which was to be- 
come the scourge of Europe; for when a little later the German 
Empire was established, it was this Prussian system of government 
that was the pattern after which the Imperial Government was 
molded. 

641. The Danish War (i864). The weapon which Bismarck 
had forged was used in three wars. The first of these, the 
Schleswig-Holstein, or Danish, War, grew out of rival Danish and 
German claims to two duchies attached to the kingdom of Den- 
mark. The dispute, adroitly handled by Bismarck, soon led to a 
declaration of war by Prussia and Austria against the little Danish 
kingdom. Denmark was, of course, quickly overpowered and 
forced to resign her claim to the duchies. 



56o THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 642 

Straightway the duchies became a bone of contention between 
Austria and Prussia. Bismarck was bent on annexing them to 
Prussia, since they would be a most valuable possession for her 
as a prospective sea power, giving her as they would the harbor 
of Kiel and control of a proposed canal uniting the Baltic and 
the North Sea. Austria was determined that her rival should not 
get them unless she received compensation in some form, — a bit 
of Silesia, and the promise of Prussia's help in case she had 
difficulty with her troublesome non-German provinces. 

There was endless controversy over the matter, Bismarck 
realized that Prussia could secure the coveted prize only through 
war with Austria, and to this extreme he was ready to go since 
a war would settle not only the question respecting the owner- 
ship of the duchies but also the larger question as to Austrian 
or Prussian predominance in Germany. The hopelessly "entangled 
Gordian knot was to be cut by the sword. 

642. The Austro-Prussian, or Seven Weeks', War (isee). 
Both Austria and Prussia began to arm. Bismarck secured the 
neutrality of France by permitting the Emperor Napoleon to 
believe that if Prussia secured additional territory by the war, 
France would be allowed to appropriate Belgium or some Rhenish 
lands as a compensation. 

He also made a ready ally of Italy by engaging that in the 
event of a successful issue of the war the new Italian kingdom 
should in return for its alliance receive Venetia (sect. 628). Bids 
in the form of various proposals and promises were also made 
by Bismarck for the alliance of the smaller German states; but 
almost all ranged themselves on the side of Austria, so that in 
spite of the Italian alliance it seemed like an unequal contest 
into which Prussia was venturing, since her population was not 
more than a third of that of the states which were likely to be 
arrayed against her. 

The war began in the early summer of 1866. On the 3d of 
July of that year was fought the great battle of Sadowa, or Konig- 
gratz, in Bohemia. This was one of the decisive battles of his- 
tory. It was Austria's Waterloo. The Prussians pushing on 



§ 643] THE NORTH GERMAN CONFEDERATION 561 

towards Vienna, the Emperor Francis Joseph was constrained to 
sue for peace, and on the 23d of August the Treaty of Prague 
was signed/ 

The long debate between Austria and Prussia was over. By 
the terms of the treaty Austria consented to the dissolution of 
the old German Confederation and agreed to allow Prussia to 
reorganize the German states as she might wish. At the same 
time she surrendered Venetia to the Italian kingdom. The hin- 
drances she had so long placed in the way both of German and 
of Italian unity were now finally removed. 

643. Establishment of the North German Confederation 
(i867). Now quickly followed the reorganization, under the 
presidency of Prussia, of the German states north of the Main 
into what was called the North German Confederation. There 
were twenty-one states in all, reckoning the three free cities of 
Hamburg, Bremen, and Liibeck. The domains of Prussia were 
enlarged by the annexation of Hanover, Hesse-Cassel, Nassau, 
the free city Frankfort, and the duchies of Schleswig and Hol- 
stein. These annexations gave the Prussian king nearly five mil- 
lion new subjects and united into a fairly compact dominion his 
heretofore severed and scattered territories. 

A constitution was adopted which provided that all matters 
of common concern should be committed to a Federal Parliament, 
or Diet, the members of the lower house of which were to be 
chosen by universal suffrage. The Prussian king was to be the 
hereditary executive of the Confederation, and the commander-in- 
chief of all the military forces of the several states composing 
the league. 

Thus was a long step taken towards German unity. But there 
still remained much to be desired. The states to the south of the 
Main — Baden, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, and Hesse-Darmstadt — 
were yet wanting to complete the unification of the Fatherland. 

1 The fear of French intervention hastened the negotiations on the part of the 
Prussian court. Since the Emperor Napoleon as the price of his consent to Italian unity 
had received Savoy and Nice (sect. 625), so now he thought to wring from Germany 
some Rhine lands as the price of his consent to German unity. 



562 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 644 

644. The Franco-Prussian War (i87o-i87i) and the Proc- 
lamation of the New German Empire. There were two obstacles 
in the way of the completion of the union. First, the South Ger- 
man states were averse to entering a confederation dominated 
by Prussia. Second, there was the opposition of the imperial and 
military French party, who viewed with ill-concealed jealousy 
the rise of this new Prussian power that threatened to push France 
from her historic position as arbiter of continental Europe. All 
France's traditional jealousy of the House of Hapsburg was now 
transferred to the rising House of Hohenzollern. 

The means which Bismarck used to remove the reluctance of 
the southern states to join the Confederation, and to overcome 
French hostility to the consummation of German unity under 
Prussian headship, were a deliberately provoked war with France. 
The situation of which he took advantage to bring about the war 
was this: In 1869 the Spanish throne became vacant. It was 
offered to Leopold, a member of the Hohenzollern family. To 
the French Emperor Napoleon III this appeared to be a scheme 
on the part of the House of Hohenzollern to unite the interests 
of Prussia and Spain, just as Austria and Spain were united, 
with such disastrous consequences to the peace of Europe, under 
the princes of the House of Hapsburg. Even after Leopold, to 
avoid displeasing France, had declined the proffered crown, the 
Emperor Napoleon demanded of King William assurance that 
no member of the House of Hohenzollern -should ever with his 
consent become a candidate for the Spanish throne. 

This demand was made of King William by the French am- 
bassador Benedetti at the little watering place of Ems. The king 
courteously refused the demand and then sent a telegram to 
Bismarck informing him of what had occurred, at the same time 
giving him permission to make such use of the message as he saw 
fit. Bismarck edited the telegram in such a way as to make it 
appear to the French that their ambassador had been insulted 
and rudely dismissed by King William, and to the Germans that 
the French government had in an arrogant manner insisted upon 



§ 645] THE IMPERIAL CONSTITUTION 563 

an impossible demand. Then he gave out the falsified telegram 
for publication. War was now inevitable.^ 

The astonishing successes of the German armies on French soil 
(sect. 591) created among Germans everywhere such patriotic 
pride that all the obstacles which had hitherto prevented any- 
thing more than a partial union of the members of the Germanic 
body was now swept out of the way by an irresistible tide of 
national sentiment. While the siege of Paris was progressing, 
commissioners were sent by the southern states to Versailles, the 
headquarters of King William, to represent to him that they 
were ready and anxious to enter the North German Union. Thus 
in rapid succession Baden, Hesse, Wiirtemberg, and Bavaria 
were received into the Confederation, the name of which was now 
changed to that of the German Confederation. 

Scarcely was this accomplished when, upon the suggestion of 
the king of Bavaria, — who had been coached by Bismarck, — 
King William, who now bore the title of President of the Con- 
federation, was given the title of German Emperor, which honor 
was to be hereditary in his family. On the i8th of January, 1871, 
within the Palace of Versailles, — the siege of Paris being still in 
progress, — amidst great enthusiasm the imperial dignity was 
formally conferred upon King William, and Germany became a 
federated Empire.^ 

645. Character of the Imperial Constitution. The Empire^ 
received a constitution. Though seemingly liberal, its articles 
were so adroitly drawn as to conceal the real absolutism of the 
government created. It provided for a parliament or legislature 

1 Bismarck had further inflamed German feeUng against the French government by 
making public Napoleon's request for Hesse and Rhenish Bavaria at the time of the 
Austro-Prussian War. These revelations had created a tremendous sentiment against 
France not only in the South German states but throughout all Germany. 

2 For the essential provisions of the Treaty of Frankfort (187 1) which ended the 
war, see sect. 592. 

3 The Empire consisted of twenty-six states, counting the imperial territory of Alsace- 
Lorraine. An outstanding fact of the Union was the preponderance of Prussia. The 
census of 1910 gave the population of Prussia as 40,165,219 ; that of all the other states 
as 24,760,770. 



564 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 645 

comprising two bodies, a Federal Council {Bundesrath) and an 
Imperial Diet (Reichstag). The Federal Council, which formed 
the upper chamber of the legislature, was composed of sixty-one 
members, who were appointed by the princes of the federated 
states. Of the whole number of delegates the Emperor, as king of 
Prussia, appointed seventeen. The members of the Council voted 
as instructed by the governments or rulers whom they represented. 

The Imperial Diet, which formed the lower chamber of the 
legislature, comprised about four hundred members elected by 
practically universal manhood suffrage. The original apportion- 
ment was one member for every twenty thousand of the popu- 
lation of the federated states. 

We have here the forms of a constitutional parliamentary gov- 
ernment. These forms, however, as we have said, merely masked 
the practically absolute powers of the Emperor. As the one who 
appointed and controlled the vote of the seventeen Prussian mem- 
bers of the Federal Council (in addition to these he also controlled 
the vote of the three delegates representing the imperial province 
of Alsace-Lorraine), he dominated that body. On all really vital 
matters it merely registered his will. 

As to the apparent powers of the Diet, there were provisions 
of the constitution which rendered these wholly illusory and left 
to this body nothing more than the semblance of authority. It 
had, it is true, the right to originate bills, though as a matter of 
fact most bills, and particularly the important ones, were framed 
by the Federal Council; but this right signified very little, since 
the Federal Council might veto any measure, and this veto could 
be overcome in no possible constitutional way. 

Then, again, the Diet could be dissolved at any time by the 
Federal Council, which meant virtually by the Emperor. When- 
ever it refused to act in accord with the imperial will its members 
were sent home and a new election ordered, and by this means a 
new and usually more tractable body was secured. 

Furthermore, the Diet had no part in shaping the policies of 
the government or any control over the administration of affairs. 
The Imperial Chancellor, who corresponded in his position in the 



§ 646] BISMARCK AS IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR 565 

government to the British Premier, was responsible not to the 
Diet but to the Emperor, who appointed and dismissed him at 
will. He could disregard with impunity and treat with contempt 
a vote of lack of confidence by that body, so long as his master, 
the Emperor, supported him. 

Finally, the Diet had practically no control over matters of 
war and peace. The Emperor could declare a defensive war with- 
out the advice or consent of that body, and since the Imperial 
Government did not scruple to falsify the truth and proclaim a 
purely offensive war as a defensive one, the Diet was without 
power or authority in this important domain.^ 

These various provisions of the constitution left to the Diet 
merely the shadow of power and authority, and made it, what it 
has been called, little more than an official debating club. Thus 
the constitution given the Empire by Bismarck, instead of creat- 
ing a truly representative parliamentary government, created (or 
rather perpetuated) "an autocratic system of government adorned 
with a democratic fagade." 

646. Bismarck as Imperial Chancellor; the Triple Alliance. 
For nearly twenty years after the close of the Franco-Prussian 
War the affairs of the new Empire were directed by Bismarck 
as the first Imperial Chancellor. In his foreign policy, which 
alone we can notice here, Bismarflk's greatest achievement was 
the formation of what is known as the Triple Alliance (Dreibund) 
between the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, and Italy.- This 
compact, in its inception and as designed by Bismarck, was a 
defensive alliance against Russia and France. The creation of 
this alliance was one of the most significant matters in the history 
of the closing years of the nineteenth century. For a decade and 
more it was a force making for the peace of Europe, but later, with 
growing Prussian predominance and arrogance, it became a menace 

1 Thus the war of 1914, though it was a war of criminal aggression on the part of 
Germany, was proclaimed by the Emperor as a war in defense of the Fatherland, and 
was started by him and his military advisers, the Reichstag not being officially informed 
of the beginning of hostilities till four days later. 

2 The beginning of the alliance was a pact between Germany and Austria-Hungary 
in 1879; it was completed by the adhesion of Italy in 1882. 



566 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 647 

to the freedom and independence of neighboring states, and thus 
a decisive factor in bringing on the great World War of 1914. 

647. Germany under Emperor William II up to the World 
War. In 1888 Emperor William I died, at the venerable age of 
ninety-one. He was followed by his son Frederick, who at the 
time of his accession was suffering from a fatal malady. He died 
after a short reign of three months, and his son came to the 
throne as Emperor William II (1888). 

It was generally thought that the young sovereign — he was 
twenty-nine years of age — would be completely under the in- 
fluence of Bismarck. But soon the Emperor disclosed a very 
imperious will of his own. His relations with Bismarck became 
strained and the aged Chancellor was brusquely dismissed.^ Many 
felt that the youthful Emperor had treated the creator of the 
Empire and the maker of the imperial fortunes of the House of 
HohenzoUern with gross ingratitude. After his dismissal of Bis- 
marck, the Emperor's rule was a very personal one." 

The wonderful commercial and industrial development of Ger- 
many, and the remarkable growth, in spite of the bitter opposition 
of the government, of the party known as the Social Democrats,^ 
who advocate an extreme programme of social and industrial re- 
form and more democratic methods in government, are two of 
the most noteworthy facts in the domestic history of the Empire 
before the opening of the tremendous conflict of 1914. 

An outstanding feature of the foreign policy of William II 
was his cultivation of the friendship of the Sultan of Turkey. 
His purpose here was to secure from the Ottoman government 



1 March i8, 1890. In his retirement at Friedrichsruh, an estate which was a gift to 
him from the grateful Emperor William I, Bismarck played the part of a "German 
Prometheus.'' He hurled defiance at all his enemies, and did not scruple to subject 
the policies of the Emperor and his ministers to the most caustic criticism. The ex- 
Chancellor died in 189S, being in his eighty-fourth year. 

2 There served under him five Chancellors of the Empire: Count Caprivi (1890- 
1894); Prince Hohenlohe ( 1 894-1 900) ; Prince von Biilow (1900-1909) ; Bethmann- 
Hollweg (1909-1917) ; Dr. George Michaelis (1917) ; Count von Hertling (1917-1918) ; 
Prince Maximilian (1918). 

8 In 1S7 1 this party cast a vote of about 124,000; in 1903 the vote was over 2,911,000 ; 
and in 1912 it rose to 4,250,399. 



§648] 



AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AFTER 1866 



567 



privileges for German traders and settlers in Asiatic Turkey, and 
especially concessions for a German-built railway running from 
Constantinople to Bagdad and the Persian Gulf. But these mat- 
ters are related to the ambitious scheme of the Emperor and the 
Prussian military caste for world domination, and of this as 
the fundamental cause of the World War we shall find it more 
convenient to speak in another connection.^ 



648. Austria-Hungary after 1866. The disaster of Sadowa 
did in a measure for Austria what the disaster of Jena did for 
Prussia (sect. 577), — brought about its political reorganization. 



^Wi '" 










Fig. 105. The Parliament Building at Budapest 
(From a photograph) 

The first step and the most important one in the process of 
reorganization was the recognition by the Austrian court of the 
claims of the Magyars to the right of equality in the monarchy 
with the hitherto dominant German race. By an agreement 
known as the Ausgleich, or Compromise, the relations of Austria 
and Hungary in the reconstituted state were defined and regu- 
lated. It provided for the division of the old empire into two 
parts, designated as the Austrian Empire and the Hungarian 
Kingdom.- Each state was to have its own parliament, the one 
sitting at Vienna and the other at Budapest, and each was to have 
complete control of its own internal affairs. Neither was to have 
the least precedence over the other. 

1 See Chapter XLIV. 

2 The official designation of the dual state was the Austro-H7oigariaH Monarchy. 



S68 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE [§ 648 

The common interests of the two states — those embracing for- 
eign affairs, the army, and finances — were to be regulated by a 
third peculiar body, the so-called ''Delegations," composed of 
sixty delegates from each of the other two parliaments. The 
hereditary head of the Austrian state was to be also the constitu- 
tional king of Hungary. This celebrated compact was duly rati- 
fied by the parliaments of Hungary and Austria, and the long 
struggle between the Magyars and the House of Hapsburg was 
virtually at an end. At the same time that the Compromise was 
arranged, the Austrian division of the monarchy was given a 
liberal constitution and the Hungarian constitution, suspended in 
1848, was restored. From this time forward until its break-up 
at the end of the World War in 19 18, Austria-Hungary was in 
form and theory a constitutional, parliamentary state; but the 
government remained in temper and spirit, and largely in prac- 
tice, an autocratic despotism. 

The Compromise, it will be noted, made no recognition what- 
soever of the historic rights and liberties of the other races or 
nationalities of the monarchy, of which there were many. It was 
no mere figure of speech which characterized the Austro-Hungarian 
Monarchy as a " European Tower of Babel." In the Austrian 
Parliament the oath was administered to the members in eight 
different languages. 

Now in the eastern half of the monarchy the Magyars, who 
formed less than one half of the population of the Hungarian 
kingdom,^ were holding all the non-Magyar races of the kingdom 
— with the exception of the Slavs of Croatia, who had secured 
some measure of self-government — in just such political serfdom 
as they themselves were subjected to before their emancipation 
by the events of 1866-186 7. Their aim was to denationalize these 
peoples by forcing them to give up their own customs and 
language and to adopt Magyar customs and the Magyar language, 
to the end that Hungary should become a compact homogeneous 
Magyar nation. 

1 The census of 1910 gave the total number of inhabitants of Hungary as 20,886,487, 
of whom only 10,050,575 were returned as being of Hungarian speech. 



§ 648] AUSTRIA-HUNGARY AFTER 1866 569 

It was the same in the other half of the monarchy. There 
a German minority^ was holding the Czechs in Bohemia and the 
Poles in Galicia in a state of subjection similar to that in which 
the Magyars were holding the non-Magyar races of Hungary. 

Now these dependent nationalities claimed that they had as 
good a right to self-government as had either the Germans or 
the Magyars. The former relations of Ireland to England, and 
the resulting agitation on the part of the Irish people for Home 
Rule, will convey some idea of this situation of things in the dual 
monarchy, and of the turbulence created in the state by the 
struggles for autonomy of these subject races. In short, the 
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy had half a dozen Irish problems. 

It was easy to forecast that, if these contentions did not end 
in the recognition by the two dominant races of the justice of 
the claims of these dependent peoples, and the conversion of the 
dual monarchy into a federal union in which the various racial 
groups should enjoy equality of rights and privileges, then the 
only possible outcome of the situation would be the disruption 
of the monarchy — probably in some time of stress and strain. 

The affairs of Austria-Hungary were almost as much a matter 
of European concern as were those of the Ottoman Empire. This 
was so for the reason that the dependent ethnic groups within 
the monarchy were merely detached areas of larger bodies of 
kindred peoples in adjoining lands, and because there was a 
tendency in these small groups to gravitate towards the larger 
masses of their kin in these neighboring countries. Thus the 
Italians in Trieste and the Tyrol were drawn towards the Italian 
kingdom; the Rumanians of Transylvania towards the principality 
of Rumania; the Slavs of the south towards the Slav state of 
Serbia. 

In a later chapter we shall learn how these racial problems 
became a contributory cause of the World War of 19 14, and a 
determining factor in its issues in so far as these involved the 
fate of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. 

1 The total population of Austria according to the census of 1910 was 28,571,934; 
the number of Germans (on basis of language), 9,950, 2'^)C^. 



570 THE NEW GERMAN EMPIRE 

Selections from the Sources. Translatio)!s and Reprints, vol. i, No. 3, for 
" The Act of Confederation "' and other documents. Bismarck, the Alan and 
the Statesman (reminiscences of Otto Prince von Bismarck, written and 
dictated by himself after his retirement from office; ed. by A. J. Butler). 
Robinson, J. H., Readings in European Histoiy, vol. ii, pp. 543-558, 564-572, 
and 5S0-596. 

Secondary Works. Sybel, H. von, The Founding of the German Empire, 
7 vols. Andrews, C. M., The Historical Developmettt of Modern Europe, vol. i, 
chaps, vi, ix, and x; vol. ii, chaps, v and vi-xii. Henderson, E. F., A Short 
History of Gerniany, vol. ii, chaps, viii-x. Lowe, C, Prince Bismarck and The 
German Emperor, IVi/Iiam II. Headlam, J. W., Bisfnarck and the Foicnding of 
the German Empire. BuscH, M., Our Chancellor. Lowell, A. L., Governments 
and Pafiies m Continental Eiirope, vol. i, chaps, v and vi ; vol. ii, chaps, vii-x. 
CooLiDGE, A. C, Origins of the T?-iple Alliance. Marriott, J. A. R., and 
Robertson, C. A., The Evolution of Prussia, chaps, viii-xiv. Hazen, C. D., 
Modern European History, chaps, xix-xxi, xxiv. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The Prussian three-class system of voting: 
Hazen, C. D., Modern European History, pp. 31 1-3 12. 2. The Frankfort Par- 
liament and the results of its failure : Marriott, J. A. R., and Robertson, C. G., 
The Evolution of Prussia, pp. 322-327. 



CHAPTER XL 

RUSSIA FROM THE CONGRESS OF VIENNA TO 
THE WORLD WAR 

(1815-1914) 

649. Preliminary Statement. The story of Russia since the 
fall of Napoleon is crowded with matters of great moment and 
interest. We can, however, in the present chapter, speak very 
briefly of only three things, — her part in the dismemberment of 
the Ottoman Empire, the emancipation of her serfs, and the 
Liberal movement. In later chapters we shall find place to say 
something of Russia in Asia and of her part in the World War. 

I. RUSSIA'S WARS AGAINST TURKEY AND HER ALLIES 

650, The Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829. In the course 
of the nineteenth century Russia waged three wars against the 
Ottoman Porte, which resulted in the expulsion of the Turks from 
a large part of their conquests in Europe. But the jealousy of 
the other great powers of Europe prevented Russia from appro- 
priating the fruits of her victories, so that the outcome of her 
efforts was the establishment of a number of independent, or prac- 
tically independent. Christian principalities on the land recovered. 

The first of these wars began in 1828. In that year, taking 
advantage of the embarrassment of the Sultan through a stubborn 
insurrection in Greece,^ Tsar Nicholas- declared war against the 

1 This was the struggle known as the War of Greek Independence (1S21-1829). 
This war was a phase of the Hberal and national movement which in the revolutionary 
year of 182 1 agitated the Italian and Iberian peninsulas. Lord Byron devoted his life 
and fortune to the cause of Greek freedom. He died of fever at the siege of Missolonghi 
(1824). England, France, and Russia finally intervened. The Turko-Egyptian fleet was 
destroyed by the fleets of the allies in the bay of Navarino (1827). The year after this 
event began the Russian campaign in the Danubian provinces, as narrated in the text. 

2 Tsars of the nineteenth century and after: Alexander I, 1801-TS25 ; Nicholas I, 
1825-1855 ; Alexander II, 1855-1881 ; Alexander III, 1S81-1894 ; Nicholas II (deposed 
and murdered), 1894-1917. 

57 1 



572 RUSSIA UNDER THE LATER TSARS [§651 

Ottoman Porte. The Russian troops crossed the Balkans with- 
out serious opposition, and were marching upon Constantinople 
when the Sultan sued for peace. The Treaty of Adrianople 
brought the war to a close (1829). 

The Turkish provinces of Moldavia and Wallachia (now 
Rumania) were rendered virtually independent of the Sultan. 
All Greece south of Thessaly and Epirus was liberated, and along 
with most of the islands of the ^gean was formed into an inde- 
pendent kingdom under the joint guardianship of England, France, 
and Russia. Prince Otto of Bavaria accepted the crown, and 
became the first king of the little Hellenic state ^ (1823). 

651. The Crimean War (i853-i856). A celebrated parable 
employed by the Tsar Nicholas in conversation with the English 
minister at St. Petersburg throws a good deal of light upon the 
circumstances that led to the Crimean War. "We have on our 
hands," said the Tsar, "a sick man — a very sick man; it would 
be a great misfortune if he should give us the slip some of these 
days, especially if it happened before all the necessary arrange- 
ments were made." Nicholas thereupon proposed that England 
and Russia shquld divide the estate of the " sick man," by which 
phrase Turkey of course was meant. England was to be allowed 
to take Egypt and Crete, while the Turkish provinces in Europe 
were to be taken under the protection of the Tsar. 

A pretense for hastening the dissolution of the sick man was not 
long wanting. A quarrel between the Greek and Latin Christians 
at Jerusalem was made the ground by Nicholas for demanding of 
the Sultan the recognition of a Russian protectorate over all Greek 

1 In 1864 the little kingdom was enlarged through the cession to it of the Ionian 
Islands by England, in whose hands they had been since the Congress of Vienna. In 
1 88 1 it received Thessaly and a part of Epirus by cession from Turkey, but in 1897, as 
the result of an unfortunate war with the Sultan, was forced to accede to a treaty which 
gave back to the Ottoman Porte a strip of Northern Thessaly. As a result of the Balkan 
Wars (sect. 706), it received additional territory on the mainland together with a number 
of TEgean islands. Under the regime of freedom, substantial progress was made prior 
to the war of 19T4. The population of the little kingdom rose from 612,000 in 1832 to 
about 4,800,000 (estimated for old and new territory) in 191 3. Industry, trade, and 
commerce revived. The Isthmus of Corinth was pierced by a canal. Railroads were 
built. Athens took on the appearance of a modem capital. Its two universities in 1912 
had an attendance of over 3000 students. 



§652] THE RUSSO-TURKISH WAR 573 

Christians in the Ottoman dominions. The demand was rejected, 
and Nicholas prepared for war. The Sultan appealed to the 
Western powers for help. England and France responded to the 
appeal, and later Sardinia joined her forces to theirs (sect. 624). 

The main interest of the struggle centered about Sevastopol, 
in the Crimea, Russia's great naval and military station in the 
Black Sea. The siege of this place, which lasted eleven months, 
was one of the most memorable in history. The Russian general 
Todleben earned a great reputation through his masterly defense 
of the works. The French troops, through their dashing bravery, 
brought great fame to the emperor who had sent them to gather 
glory for his throne. The English "Light Brigade" won immortal- 
ity in its memorable charge at Balaklava. And along with the 
story of the Light Brigade will live in English annals, " through 
the long hereafter of her speech and song," the story of Florence 
Nightingale, whose labors in alleviating the sufferings of the sick 
and wounded in the trenches and the base hospitals forms the 
most inspiring chapter in the history of humanitarian endeavor.^ 

The Russians were at length forced to evacuate their stronghold. 
The war was now soon brought to an end by the Treaty of Paris. 
The keynote of this treaty was the maintenance in its integrity 
of the Ottoman Empire as a barrier against Muscovite encroach- 
ments. Russia was given back Sevastopol, but was required to 
abandon all claims to a protectorate over any of the subjects of 
the Porte, and to agree not to raise any more fortresses on the 
Euxine nor keep upon that sea any armed ships, save what might 
be needed for police service." 

652. The Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878. Anxiously as 
the Treaty of Paris had provided for the permanent settlement 
of the Eastern Question, barely twenty-two years had passed 
before it was again up before Europe. The Sultan could not or 
would not give his Christian subjects that protection which he 



1 Read Longfellow's poem Saittci Filoittcna. 

- Russia repudiated this article of the treaty during the Franco-Prussian War in 1871. 
She then restored the fortresses of Sevastopol and before the opening of the war of 1914 
was maintaining a strong fleet of warships on the Black Sea. 



574 RUSSIA UNDER THE LATER TSARS [§653 

had solemnly promised should be given. In 1876 there occurred 
in Bulgaria what are known as the '' Bulgarian atrocities," — 
massacres of Christian men, women, and children more revolting 
perhaps than any others of which history up to that time had 
made record. 

Fierce indignation was kindled throughout Europe. The Rus- 
sian armies were soon in motion. Kars in Asia Minor and Plevna 
in European Turkey, the latter after a memorable siege, fell into 
the hands of the Russians, and the armies of the Tsar were once 
more in full march upon Constantinople, with the prospect of 
soon ending forever Turkish rule on European soil, when England 
intervened, sent her fleet through the Dardanelles, and arrested 
the triumphant march of the Russians. 

653. Treaty of Berlin (i878). The Treaty of Berlin,^ the 
articles of which were arranged by the great powers, adjusted 
once more the disorganized affairs of the Sublime Porte and bol- 
stered up as well as was possible the "sick man." But he lost 
a considerable part of his estate, for even his friends had no 
longer any hope either of his recovery or of his reformation. Out 
of those provinces of his dominions in Europe in which the 
Christian population was most numerous, there was created a 
group of wholly independent or half-independent states.- Bosnia 
and Herzegovina were given to Austria-Hungary to administer, 
but were not actually severed from the Ottoman Empire. 

The island of Cyprus, by a secret arrangement between the 
Ottoman Porte and the English government, was ceded to Eng- 
land " to be occupied and administered." In return England 
guaranteed the integrity of the Sultan's possessions in Asia. 

1 In this treaty the great powers revised the Treaty of San Stefano which Russia had 
concluded with Turkey. This treaty practically expelled the Ottoman Porte from Europe 
and created an enlarged Bulgaria at the expense of the Serbian and Greek races. 

'^ The absolute independence of Rumania (the ancient provinces of Moldavia and 
Wallachia), Serbia, and Montenegro was formally acknowledged; Bulgaria, greatly 
reduced from the extension given it by the Treaty of San Stefano, was to enjoy self- 
government, but was to pay tribute to the Porte ; Eastern Rumelia was to have a 
Christian governor, but was to remain under the dominion of the Sultan. In 1885 Eastern 
Rumelia united with Bulgaria. Bessarabia, whose population was almost wholly Rumanian 
in race, was taken from Rumania and given to Russia. 



§ 654] ♦ EMANCIPATION OF RUSSIAN SERFS 575 

Turkey thus lost much of her former territory. There were, 
however, still left in Europe under the direct authority of the 
Sultan five million or more subjects of whom at least half were 
Christian in religion and non-Turkish in race. The interests of 
these peoples were thus sacrificed to the rival ambition^ and 
mutual jealousies of the great powers. Time brought retribution 
for the great crime. It was the evil rule of the Turk in these 
regions — the great powers weakly allowing him to ignore all his 
promises of reform^ — -which was one of the direct causes of the 
Balkan wars of 1912-1913, the prelude to the cataclysm of 1914. 



II. THE EMANCIPATION OF THE SERFS, AND THE 
LIBERAL MOVEMENT 

654. Emancipation of the Russian Serfs (1861). The name 
of Tsar Alexander II (1855-1881) will live -in history as the 
Emancipator of the' forty-six millions of Russian serfs. In order 
to render intelligible what emancipation meant for the serfs, a 
word is needed respecting the former land system in Russia 
and the personal status of the serf. 

As to the first, the estate of the lord was divided into two parts, 
the smaller of which was reserved by the proprietor for his own 
use, the larger being allotted to his serfs, who formed a village 
community known as the Mir} 

Besides working the village lands, the fruits of which were 
enjoyed by the serfs, the village^ were obliged to till'iihe lands 
of the lord, three days in a week being the usual service required. 
The serfs were personally subject to the lord to the extent that he 
might flog them in case of disobedience, but he could not sell them 
individually as slaves are sold; yet when he sold his estate the 
whole community of serfs passed with it to the new proprietor. 

1 This social and economic group affords the key to much of the history of the Russian 
people. It is the Russian counterpart of the village of serfs on the mediaeval manor of 
western Europe. It is a cluster of a dozen or perhaps a hundred families, — a clan settled 
down to agricultural life. At the time of Peter the Great ninety-nine out of every hun- 
dred Russians were members of ATiis. At the end of the nineteenth century about nine 
tenths of the people were living in these little villages. 



576 RUSSIA UNDER THE LATER TSARS [§655 

The Emancipation Code, " the Magna Carta of the Russian 
peasant," which was promulgated in 1861, required the masters 
of the peasant serfs to give them the lands they had farmed for 
themselves, for which, however, they were to make some fixed 
return in labor or rent/ The lands thus acquired became the 
common property of the village. All other serfs, such as house 
servants and operatives in factories, were to gain their freedom at 
the end of two years' additional service, during which time, how- 
ever, they were to receive fair wages. 

As in the ca^e of the emancipation of the slaves in our South- 
ern States, the emancipation of the Russian serfs did not meet all 
the hopeful expectations of the friends of the reform. One cause 
of the unsatisfactory outcome of the measure was that the villagers 
did not get enough land, save in those districts where the earth 
is very rich, to enable them to support themselves by its tillage. 
Hence many of them left their allotments and went to the cities, 
and others fell into debt and became the victims of heartless 
usurers. 

655. The Liberal Movement in Russia ; Nihilism and 
Terrorism. From 181 5 onward there was a growing protest in 
Russia against the despotic government of the Tsar. This move- 
ment was nothing else than the outworking in Russia of the ideas 
of the French Revolution. If some definite beginning of the move- 
ment be sought, this may be found in the events of 18 13-18 15. 
In those years, as it has been put, the whole Russian army, like 
the great Tsar Peter, went on a pilgrimage to the West, and, 
like Peter, they got some new ideas. This was simply a repeti- 
tion of what had occurred in the case of those Frenchmen who 
in 1776 went to America to take part in the War of American 
Independence (sect. 503). 

Those carrying on this propaganda of Liberalism were known 
as Nihilists. They were found especially in the faculties and 

1 The serfs on the crown and state lands, about 23,000,000 in number, had already 
been freed by special edicts (the first issued in July, 1S58). They were given at once, 
without any return being exacted, the lands they had so long tilled as nominal bondsmen. 
We say nominal bondsmen, since this class labored under only a few restrictions and 
were subject to the payment merely of a light rent. 



§ 656] THE CALLING OF THE DUMA 577 

among the students of the universities. Their fundamental de- 
mands were for constitutional representative government, the re- 
form of the judicial system, and the removal of the restriction 
upon free discussion of public matters. In a word, they demanded 
that the Russian people should have all those rights and immu- 
nities which the peoples of western Europe were enjoying. 

At the time of the Russo-Turkish War of 1878-1879 the Liberal 
movement assumed a violent phase, — just as the Revolution in 
France did in 1793, — being then transformed into what is known 
as Terrorism. Nihilism took this form under the persecutions and 
repressions of the government. The principle of the extreme 
Nihilists, or Terrorists, that assassination is a righteous means of 
political reform was now acted upon. The Tsar, Alexander II, 
was assassinated (1881). After that event the government be- 
came even more cruelly despotic and repressive than before. 

Finland particularly was the victim of this ruthless and irre- 
sponsible despotism. This country was ceded to Russia by Sweden 
in 1809. It formed a grand duchy of the Russian Empire. It 
had a liberal constitution which the Tsars had sworn to main- 
tain and which secured the Finns a full measure of local self- 
government. Under their constitution the Finns, who number about 
two million souls, were a loyal, contented, and prosperous people. 
During the years 1 899-1902 the Tsar Nicholas II by a series of 
imperial decrees practically annulled the ancient Finnish con- 
stitution and reduced the country to the condition of an adminis- 
trative district of the empire. In a word, Finland was made a 
second Poland. 

656, The Calling of the Duma (1905). There could of course 
be but one outcome to this contest between the "Autocrat of all 
the Russias"^ and his subjects. The Tsar of Russia was simply 
fighting the hopeless battle that has been fought and lost by so 

1 It was only theoretically that the Tsar was the autocratic ruler of Russia. The 
power behind the throne, the actual ruler, was the hierarchy of officials, w-ho constituted 
what is known as a bureaucracy. This body of narrow-minded, selfish, and corrupt officials 
has been well likened to the monster in Mrs. Shelley's romance Frankenstem. Like 
that, monster it got beyond the control of its creator and committed wanton and 
revolting crimes. 



578 RUSSIA UNDER THE LATER TSARS [§ 656 

many despotic sovereigns, a battle which has ever the same issue, — 
the triumph of liberal principles and the admission of the people 
to participation in the government. 

The Russo-Japanese War of 1904- 190 5, by utterly discrediting 
the corrupt, unscrupulous, and incapable government of the autoc- 
racy, brought matters to a crisis. The people, forced to make 
unheard-of sacrifices of life and treasure to carry on a disastrous 
war in which they had neither voice nor interest, arose in virtual 
insurrection. The Tsar, finally constrained to promise the people 
a share in the government, convened in 1905 a body called the 
Duma,^ or National Assembly, composed of representatives elected 
by the people. 

Although the Duma was at first really nothing more than a 
consultative body, it soon gained legislative powers and gradually 
acquired such a position in the government as enabled it, in the 
midst of the stress of the great European war, to overthrow the 
monarchy and establish a republic (1917). The story of this 
momentous revolution forms a part of the history of the World 
War, being one of the outcomes of that titanic struggle.- 

Selections from the Sources. The European Concert in the Eastern Question 
(ed. by Thomas Erskine Holland; contains the text of all the important 
treaties affecting the relations of Russia and the Ottoman Empire since 1826). 
Hamley, E. B., The Sio>y of the Campaign. (This is a graphic account of the 
Crimean War, " written in a tent in the Crimea," by an English officer.) 

Secondary Works. Rambaud, A., History of Russia, vol. iii. Leroy- 
Beaulieu, a., The E}npire of the Tsars and the Russians, 3 vols. Morfill, 
W. R., The Story of Russia, chaps, x and xi. Stepniak (pseudonym), The 
Russian Peasantry. NOBLE, E., The Russian Revolt and Russia and the 
Russians. Seignobos, C, A Political History of Europe, pp. 63S-670. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The Russian Mir and the effects upon the 
serfs of the emancipation measure : Wallace, D. M., Russia (new ed., 1905). 
(Consult Table of Contents.) 2. Siberia and the Exile System: Kennan, G., 
Siberia and the Exile System ; Noble, E., Russia and the Russians, chap. xi. 

1 The Duma constituted the lower chamber of a National Parliament, the upper 
chamber being formed by a preexistjng body called the Council of the Empire, which 
in 1906 was given legislative power. 

2 Another matter of great interest in Russian history during the nineteenth century 
and the early years of the twentieth is the expansion of the Russian Empire in Asia and 
the resulting conflict with Japan. Concerning this important phase of Russian history 
and of Russia's part in the war of 1914 we shall speak in following chapters. 



CHAPTER XLI 
THE NEW INDUSTRIALISM 

657. The Physical Basis of the New Industrialism. We 
have already noted the beginnings in England of the new indus- 
trialism created by the great inventions which marked the latter 
part of the eighteenth century (sect. 487). In the decade between 
1830 and 1840 the industrial development thus initiated received 
a great impulse through the bringing to practical perfection of 
several of the earlier inventions and by new discoveries and fresh 
inventions. Prominent among these were the steam railway, the 
electric telegraph, and the ocean steamship. In the year 1830 
George Stephenson exhibited the first really successful locomotive. 
In 1836 Morse perfected the telegraph. In 1838 ocean steamship 
navigation was first practically solved. In their relation to the new 
industrial epoch, these inventions may be compared to the three 
great inventions or discoveries (printing, gunpowder, and the 
mariner's compass) which ushered in the Modern Age (sect. 274). 

Somewhat later, to these parent inventions were added the elec- 
tric engine, which brought in the trolley car; the gasoline motor, 
which gave the world the automobile and the airplane; and in- 
numerable other inventions and mechanical appliances of science. 
These form the physical basis of the new industrialism. They have 
quickened, intensified, and transformed all the industrial arts and 
trades. 

658. Characteristics of the New Industrialism. First, the 
new industrialism substituted machine production for hand pro- 
duction. This meant for one thing an enormous increase in the 
quantity of articles manufactured for human use. 

Second, the new industrialism transferred the chief industries 
from the home to the factory. This, as we shall see, has had 
a profound and far-reaching influence upon the family group, 
especially upon the women members of it. 

579 



58o THE NEW INDUSTRIALISM [§ 659 

Third, the new industrialism, hastening a development already 
in progress, brought in the capitalistic system of industry. Under 
this system those engaged in the industrial life of society are 
divided into two chief classes : namely, capitalistic employers, a 
comparatively small class who furnish the large amount of capital 
needed to carry on manufacturing and other enterprises in the 
large way required by the new industrialism; and workmen, com- 
prising the larger part of the industrial population, who sell their 
labor to the capitalistic employers for a certain wage. 

659. Gradual Spread of the New System. Besides bearing in 
mind these important features of the new industry, we should also 
note the fact that it was only gradually that the new method of 
manufacturing was introduced into the different countries. As 
we have learned, the revolution began in England in the latter 
half of the eighteenth century and before the outbreak of the 
French Revolution had transformed the chief national manufac- 
tures, particularly the production of hardware and of cotton and 
woolen goods. Two or three decades later the industries of. the 
leading countries of western continental Europe were transformed. 
In Russia the revolution was only fairly under way at the opening 
of the war of 19 14. China was only just beginning to feel the 
effects of the new mode of production. In the course of time the 
revolution must inevitably penetrate all the countries of the world, 
for the old hand processes of manufacture cannot compete with 
the new power-machine methods of production. 

In the following sections we shall note how powerfully the new 
industrialism has reacted upon the political, the social, and the 
economic life of the peoples that have come under its transforming 
influence. 

660. Political Results of the New Industrialism. The new 
industrialism has furthered greatly the Political Revolution, that 
democratic movement of the last two centuries which we have 
been following. It has done this largely by developing city life. 
The factory system of manufacturing requires the concentration 
of the working population at the great industrial centers. Hence 
the population of the countries that have come under the influence 



§ 661] THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT 581 

of the new industry, from being predominantly rural and agricul- 
tural, has become predominantly urban and industrial. Now, 
city life fosters democracy. Through daily contact with one 
another, through exchange of ideas, through increased opportu- 
nities for collective action, the dwellers of the city become less 
conservative than country people and more ready to engage in 
political activities and projects of reform/ Hence the new indus- 
try, through the concentration of the population of the industrial 
nations in large cities, has given a great impulse to the develop- 
ment of government by the people. 

Another important political result of the new industrialism has 
been the intensifying of international rivalries. The increased 
production of the great factories, mills, and workshops of the 
new industry has impelled the manufacturers to seek foreign 
and distant markets for their surplus goods. This has intensified 
the competition among the great industrial nations for the control 
of the world's markets, and has led governments to establish 
protectorates, acquire dependencies, and even to seek to get com- 
plete political control of the lands of backward, semicivilized, 
and decadent peoples, in order thereby to gain new outlets for 
the surplus manufactures of the national industries, or to secure 
the native products of these overseas countries for use as raw 
material in the home industries and arts. This sharp international 
competition thus induced has been one of the most important 
factors in the history of the last two or three decades. It was 
one of the contributory causes of the World War, which will be 
the subject of a later chapter. 

661. Relation of the New Industrialism to the Woman's 
Movement. The new industrialism, as we have seen, has trans- 
ferred various of the industries and arts formerly carried on in 
the home, and largely by the women members of the family, from 
the home to the factory. The women have followed the work, 
and thus have entered into industrial competition with the men. 
Naturally, this new place and role in the industrial life of society 

' It will be recalled how the mediaeval towns were the birthplace of political 
freedom (of, sect. 174). 



582 THE NEW INDUSTRIALISM [§ 662 

has led them to seek emancipation from the various disabilities 
under which they have labored from time immemorial, and to 
demand the right of suffrage, and equal participation with men 
in the making of laws and in the conduct of the government under 
which they live. This woman's movement is undoubtedly one 
of the most significant which the new industrialism has created, or 
to which it has given fresh force and urgency. 

662. The Labor Problem. The new industrialism has created 
many problems of an economic nature. Beyond question the one 
most deeply charged with grave import for society is the so-called 
Labor Problem. This problem, viewed in its most important 
aspect, may be stated thus: How are the products of the world's 
industry to be equitably distributed? 

The condition of things is this: Through the employment of 
the forces of nature and the use of improved machinery, economic 
goods, that is, things which meet the wants of men, can be 
produced in almost unlimited quantities. But this increase in 
society's efficiency in industrial production has not entirely solved 
our economic problems, for there are still many who are very poor 
despite the enormous total wealth of the world. Under the pres- 
ent mode of distribution, in which the total product of the com- 
bined effort of capital and labor is apportioned as rent, interest, 
wages, and profit, the few secure a disproportionate share of the 
output of the new industry. Great monopolies or trusts have 
been created and fabulous fortunes have been amassed by a few 
individuals, while the great majority of the unskilled laborers 
for wages have had their toil lightened and their remuneration 
increased by far less rapid stages. 

This slowness 'with which we have progressed toward the equi- 
table distribution of wealth, of material well-being, and of the 
benefits and enjoyments of modern civilization has created 
dangerous discontent in the ranks of the manual workers, espe- 
cially of those who are least educated and so least familiar with the 
slow steps by which substantial and enduring progress has usually 
been made. This discontent finds expression in strikes and agita- 
tion for the more rapid improvement of their economic condition. 



§ 663] SOCIALISM AND INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY 583 

663. Socialism and Industrial Democracy. Among many, 
proposed solutions of the labor problem, such as profit-sharing, and 
boards of conciliation to adjust disputes between employers and 
employed about wages, hours of employment, and general conditions 
of labor, the one that has provoked most discussion and assumed 
greatest historical significance is that offered by the socialists/ 

The core or essence of true socialism is common ownership 
and management of all industrial instruments and enterprises. 
Just as our government — ^ local, state, or national — now owns 
schoolhouses and controls education, owns and conducts the post 
office, municipal waterworks, and other public utilities, so would 
the socialists have all governments, by the more or less gradual 
extension of their functions, assume possession and control of the 
railways, the telegraph and telephone systems, the mines, the mills, 
the factories, the land — in a word, all industrial instruments and 
undertakings. They would thus do away with the present wage sys- 
tem and private capital, but not with private or individual property. 

The programme of the socialists has, however, made slow prog- 
ress in Great Britain and America. In both lands it is usually 
viewed as involving too fundamental a change in the present system 
of industry to be adopted as a whole in the near future. Indeed, 
recent experiences in government control of industry during the 
emergency of war have led many progressive thinkers among both 
employers and employed to fear greater evils under a system of 
socialism than those that we now endure. They point, on the one 
hand, to the frightful conditions to which communism — an ex- 
treme form of socialism — has led in Russia and elsewhere and, on 
the other, to the slow but certain progress that the present system 
is making toward a fairer division of the returns from all industry. 

References. Schaeffle, A. E. F., The Quintessence of Socialism. Ely, R. T., 
Socialism and Social Reform. Spargo, J., Socialism, a Summary and Interpre- 
tation of Socialist Principles. Seignobos, C, History of Cojttemporary Civiliza- 
tion, pp. 425-436. Cunningham, W., Western Civilization in its Economic 
Aspects (Mediizval and Modem Times), pp. 225-267. 

1 The father of German sociahsm, which is the most influential body of socialistic 
doctrine in the world, was Karl Marx (1818-1883). 



CHAPTER XLII 

EUROPEAN EXPANSION IN THE NINETEENTH AND THE 
EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY 

I. CAUSES AND GENERAL PHASES OF THE EXPANSION 
MOVEMENT 

664. Significance of the Expansion of Europe into Greater 
Europe. In speaking of the establishment of the European 
colonies and settlements of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
turies we likened this expansion of Europe into Greater Europe 
to the expansion in antiquity of Greece into Greater Greece 
and Rome into Greater Rome. We have now to say something 
of the later phases of this wonderful outward movement of the 
European peoples. 

In the first place we should note that it is this expansion move- 
ment which gives such significance to that intellectual, moral, 
and political development of the European peoples which we 
have been studying. This evolution might well be likened to 
the religious evolution in ancient Judea. That development of a 
new religion was a matter of transcendent importance because 
the new faith was destined not for a little corner of the earth 
but for all the world. Likewise the creation by Renaissance, 
Reformation, and Revolution of a new, rich, and progressive 
civilization in Europe is a matter of vast importance to universal 
history because that civilization has manifestly been wrought out 
not for a single continent or for a single race but for all the 
continents and for all mankind. 

We are now to see how the bearers of this new culture have 
carried or are carrying it to all lands and are communicating 
it to all peoples, thereby opening up a new era not alone in the 
history of Europe but in the history of the world. 

5^4 



§ 665] LOSS OF EARLIER COLONL\L EMPIRES 585 

665. The Fate of the Earlier Colonial Empires; Decline and 
Revival of Interest in Colonies. The history we have narrated 
has revealed the fate of all the colonial empires founded by the 
various European nations during the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries. The magnificent Portuguese Empire soon became the 
spoil of the Dutch and the English; France lost her colonial 
possessions to England ; a great part of the colonies of the Dutch 
also finally fell into English hands; before the end of the eight- 
eenth century England lost through revolution her thirteen colo- 
nies in North America ; and in the early part of the nineteenth 
century Spain in like manner lost all her dependencies on the 
mainland of the New World. 

After these discouraging experiences with their colonies the 
governments of Europe lost interest for a while in possessions 
beyond the seas. Statesmen came to hold the doctrine that 
colonies are "like fruit, which as soon as ripe falls from the 
tree." The English minister Disraeli, in referring to England's 
colonial possessions, once used these words: "Those wretched 
colonies are millstones about our neck." 

Before the close of the nineteenth century, however, there 
sprang up a most extraordinary revival of interest in colonies 
and dependencies, and the leading European states began to 
compete eagerly for over-the-sea possessions. 

666. Causes of the Revived Interest in Colonies. A variety 
of causes concurred to awaken or to foster this new interest in 
colonies. One cause is to be found in the rapid increase during 
the nineteenth century of the people of European stock. At the 
beginning of the century the estimated population of Europe 
(excluding Turkey) was about one hundred and sixty millions; 
at the end of the century it had risen to four hundred and thirty- 
six millions. During this same period the number of people of 
European stock in the world at large rose from about one 
hundred and seventy millions to over five hundred millions.^ This 

1 These earlier numbers must be regarded as mere approximations. We have no 
reliable figures for the beginning of the centurj'. Census-taking is practically a nineteenth- 
centur)' innovation, save in two or three countries. 



586 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§ 666 

increase in numbers of the European peoples is one of the most 
important facts in modern history. It has caused Europe to 
overflow and to inundate the world. It has made the smallest 
of the continents the mother and nursery of nations.' 

The political significance of this great outward movement, 
which almost unnoticed for a long time by European statesmen 
was creating a new Europe outside of Europe and shifting the 
center of gravity of the world, at last attracted the attention of 
the European governments and awakened an unwonted interest 
in colonies and dependencies. 

A second cause is to be found in that industrial revolution 
which began in England towards the end of the eighteenth cen- 
tury and which gradually transformed the industrial life of all 
the more advanced nations. The enormous quantity of fabrics 
and wares of every kind which the new processes of manufacture 
created led, as we have seen, to sharp competition among com- 
mercial classes in the different nations for the control of the 
markets in the uncivilized or semicivilized lands. In order to 
secure a monopoly of these markets for their subjects it was 
thought necessary by the European governments to take pos- 
session of these lands or to establish protectorates over them.- 

A third cause, one which tended to give a general character 
to the colonial movement, was the manifest advantage that Eng- 
land was deriving from her colonial possessions, especially as re- 
vealed on the occasions of Queen Victoria's Golden and Diamond 



1 The great tide of emigration which during the past century has flowed from 
Europe into the unoccupied places of the world was not set in motion by any single 
cause. With the pressure arising from the growing population of Europe, which may 
be regarded as'the primary cause of the movement, there concurred a great variety of 
other causes, political, religious, and economic in their nature, such as have always 
been inciting or fostering causes in every great migration and colonization movement 
known to history. 

" This was done in accordance with the theory that " trade follows the flag." .And 
in a measure this is true. It is the manufactuiers, traders, bankers, engineers, and pro- 
moters of the country which has secured political control of a semicivilized overseas 
land that are quite sure — even though the ''open door" policy, that is, equal opportunity 
to the traders of all nations, be guaranteed by treaties — to secure the most of the con- 
cessions for industrial exploitation, for working the mines, for constructing railroads, 
and for making loans to the native rulers. 



§667] 



STANLEY'S DISCOVERIES 



587 



Jubilees in 1887 and 1897, when there passed along the streets 
of London imposing processions of representatives of all the 
races of the British Empire. This spectacle, unparalleled in 
modern times in its suggestions of imperial riches and power, 
produced a profound impression upon the witnessing nations. 
It stirred in them a spirit of emulation and made them eager 
to secure colonial possessions and dependencies that they too, 
like England, might rule over many 
lands and races. 

Thus it came about through these 
and other influences that during the 
last fifteen or twenty years of the 
nineteenth century almost all the old 
colonizing peoples of Europe were 
exerting themselves to the utmost to 
build up new empires to take the 
place of those they had lost, while 
other nations that had never pos- 
sessed colonies now also began to 
compete eagerly with those earlier in 
the field for overseas possessions. 

667. Stanley's Discoveries open 
up the "Dark Continent." By 
the time, however, of this awakening of the governments of 
Europe to the importance of colonies, almost all the lands outside 
of Europe suited to European settlement were closed against true 
colonizing enterprises by having been appropriated by England, 
or through their being in the control of independent states that 
had grown out of colonies planted by immigrants of European 
speech and blood. The makers of new empires had no longer 
the whole world before them from which to choose. 

Africa, however, was still left. For a century intrepid explorers 
had been endeavoring to uncover the mysteries of that continent. 
Among these was the missionary-explorer David Livingstone. 
He died in 1873. His mantle fell upon Henry M. Stanley, 
who a short time after the death of Livingstone set out on an 




Fig. 106. Henry M. Stanley 
(From a photograph) 



588 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§668 

adventurous expedition across Africa^ (1874-1877), in which 
journey he discovered the course of the Congo and learned the 
nature of its great basin. Not since the age of Columbus had there 
been any discoveries in the domain of geography comparable in im- 
portance to these of Stanley. Stanley gave the world an account of 
his journey in a book bearing the title Through the Dark Conti- 
nent. The appearance of this work marks an epoch in the history 
of Africa. It inspired innumerable enterprises, political, commer- 
cial, and philanthropic, whose aim was to develop the natural 
resources of the continent and to open it up to civilization. 

668. The Founding of the Congo Free State (isss). One 
immediate outcome of the writings and discoveries of Stanley 
was the founding of the Congo Free State. Through the efforts 
of King Leopold II of Belgium an International African Associa- 
tion was formed, under whose auspices Stanley, after his return 
from his second expedition, was sent out to establish stations in 
the Congo basin and to lay there the foundation of European 
order and government. 

The Association had found in Stanley a remarkably able lieu- 
tenant. His work as an organizer and administrator was carried 
on almost continuously for five years (1879-1884), "long years 
of bitter labor," as he himself speaks of them. He made treaties 
with over four hundred and fifty native chiefs, who ceded to him 
their sovereign rights over their lands. He founded numerous 
stations along the banks of the Congo and its tributaries. By 
these and like herculean labors Stanley — Stanley Africanus, it 
has been suggested, should be his ennobled name — became the 
real founder of the Congo Free State and earned a place among 
the great administrators and state builders of modern times." 

1 Stanley had made an earlier expedition (1S71-1872) in search of Livingstone. 

2 From 1882, the year of the actual founding of the state, until 190S the country was 
merely an appanage of the Belgian crown. In 190S King Leopold ceded the state to 
Belgium. Important products of the country are rubber, palm nuts, and cocoa. Cotton 
and tobacco are successfully cultivated. Recent estimates of the population of the 
colony vary from 9,000,000 to 15,000,000. A railroad projected by Stanley, two hundred 
and fifty miles in length, has been built around the falls of the Congo. This enterprise 
has brought into touch with civilization a vast region which throughout all the long 
period of history up to the time of Stanley's achievement had been absolutely cut off 
from communication with the civilized races of mankind. 



§ 669] THE PARTITION OF AFRICA 589 

669. The Partition of Africa. The discoveries of Stanley and 
the founding of the Congo Free State were the signal for a scram- 
ble among the powers of Europe for African territory. England, 
France, and Germany were the strongest competitors and they 
got the largest shares. In less than a generation Africa became 
a dependency of Europe. The only native states still retaining 
their independence at the beginning of the war of 19 14 were 
Abyssinia and the negro republic of Liberia. The government 
of the latter was in the hands of American freedmen or their 
descendants. 

This transference of the control of the affairs of Africa from 
the hands of its native inhabitants or those of Asiatic Moham- 
medan intruders to the hands of Europeans is without question 
the most momentous transaction in the history of that continent, 
and one which must shape its future destiny. 

In the following sections of this chapter, in which we propose 
briefly to rehearse the part which each of the leading European 
states has taken in the general expansion movement, we shall 
necessarily have to speak of the part which each played in the 
partition of Africa and tell what each secured. 

II. THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 

670. England in America; the Dominion of Canada. The 

separation of the thirteen American colonies from England in 
1776 (sect. 484) seemed to give a fatal blow to English hopes of 
establishing a great colonial empire in America. But half of 
North America still remained in English hands. 

Gradually the attractions of British North America as a 
dwelling-place for settlers of European stock became known. Im- 
migration, mostly from the British Isles, increased in volume, so 
that the growth of the country in population was phenomenal, 
rising from about a quarter of a million at the beginning of the 
nineteenth century to over seven millions (estimated) in 19 14. 

One of the most important matters in the political history of 
Canada since the country passed under British rule is the granting 



590 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§670 

of responsible government to the provinces in 1841. Up to that 
time England's colonial system was in principle like that which 
had resulted in the loss to the British Empire of the thirteen 
colonies. The concession marked a new era in the history of 
English colonization. The Canadian provinces now became in 
all home matters absolutely self-governing.^ 

The concession of complete self-government to the provinces 
was followed, in 1867, by the union of Upper and Lower Canada, 
Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick in a federal state under the name 
of the Dominion of Canada.- The constitution of the Dominion, 
save as to the federal principle, is modeled after the British, 
wherein it differs from the recently framed Australian constitution, 
which follows closely that of the United States. 

The political union of the provinces made possible the success- 
ful accomplishment of one of the great engineering undertakings of 
our age. This was the construction of a transcontinental railroad 
(the Canadian Pacific Railway) from IVIontreal to Vancouver. 
This road has done for the confirming of the federal union and 
for the industrial development of the Dominion what the building 
of similar transcontinental lines has done for the United States.^ 

In the World War of 1914-1919 the Dominion was stanchly 
loyal to the motherland, sending more than four hundred thousand 
soldiers to fight by the side of the soldiers of Great Britain and 
of her other overseas dominions. 

By reason of its vast geographical extent, — its area is more 
than thirty-five times as great as that of the British Isles, — its 
inexhaustible mineral deposits, its unrivaled fisheries, its limitless 
forests, grazing lands, and wheat fields, its bracing climate, and, 
above all, its free institutions, the Dominion of Canada seems 
marked out to be one of the great future homes of the Anglo- 
Saxon race. 

^ The treaty-making power and matters of peace and war were left in the hands of 
the British government. 

- Later the confederation was joined by British Columbia, Prince Edward Island, 
and other provinces. Newfoundland has steadily refused to join the union. 

3 In iqi4 a second continental line (the Trunk Pacific Railway), running from a point 
in New Brunswick to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, was completed. 




Longitude 20 West 



a^ 

Cape TownW" 

O. of Qooi floj>«S 



§ 671] ENGLAND IN AUSTRALASIA 591 

671. England in Australasia;^ the Proclamation of the Com- 
monwealth of Australia (1901). About the time that England 
lost her American colonies the celebrated navigator Captain Cook 
reached and explored the shores of New Zealand and Australia 
(1769-1771). Disregarding the claims of earlier visitors to these 
lands, he took possession of the islands for the British crown. 

The best use to which England could at first think to put the 
new lands was to make them a place of exile for criminals. The 
first shipload of convicts was landed at Botany Bay in Australia 
in 1788. But the agricultural riches of large districts of the new 
lands, — the interior of Australia is a hopeless desert, — their 
adaptability to stock raising, and the healthfulness of the climate 
soon drew to them a stream of English immigrants. In 1851 
came the announcement of the discovery in Australia of fabulously 
rich deposits of gold, and then set in a tide of immigration such 
as the world has seldom seen. 

Before the close of the nineteenth century five flourishing 
colonies (New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Aus- 
tralia, and West Australia), with an aggregate population, includ- 
ing that of the neighboring island of Tasmania, of almost four 
millions (by 1914 this number had increased to about five mil- 
lions), had grown up along the fertile well-watered rim of the 
Australian continent and had developed free institutions similar 
to those of the mother country. 

The chief political event in the history of these colonies before 
the beginning of the World War was their consolidation, just 
at the opening of the twentieth century (1901), into the Common- 
wealth of Australia, a federal union similar to our own." 

1 Australasia, meaning " south land of Asia," is the name under which Austraha and 
New Zealand are comprehended. Here, as in South Africa, in Canada, and in India, 
England appeared late on the ground. The Spaniards and the Dutch had both preceded 
her. The presence of the Dutch is witnessed by the names New Holland,' (the earlier 
name of Australia), Van Diemen's Land (the original name of Tasmania), and New 
Zealand, attaching to the greater islands. 

2 New Zealand was not included in the federation. It, together with some neigh- 
boring islands, constitutes a self-governing Dominion. It has a population, exclusive of 
natives, of slightly over a million (census of 191 1). It has advanced farther towards 
State Socialism than any other country. 



592 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§ 672 

Like Canada, Australia made great sacrifices in blood and 
treasure to uphold the cause of the motherland and her allies 
in the tremendous contest that began in Europe in 19 14. 

The vast possibilities of the future of this new Anglo-Saxon 
commonwealth in the South Pacific — the area of Australia is only 
a little less than that of the United States — has impressed in an 
unwonted way the imagination of the world. It is possible that 
in the coming periods of history this new Britain will hold some 
such place in the Pacific as the motherland now holds in the 
Atlantic.^ 

672. England in Asia. We have noted the founding of the 
British Indian Empire (sect. 483). Throughout the nineteenth 
century England steadily advanced the frontiers of her dominions 
here and consolidated her power until by the close of the century 
she had brought either under her direct rule or under her suze- 
rainty over three hundred millions of Asiatics,'- — the largest 
number of human beings, so far as history knows, ever united 
under a single scepter. 

We must here note how England's occupation of India and 
her large interests in the trade of southern and eastern Asia 
involved her during the nineteenth century in several wars and 
shaped in great measure her foreign policies. One of the earliest 
of these wars was that known as the Afghan War of 1 838-1 842, 
into which she was drawn through her jealousy of Russia.^ 

At the same time England became involved in the so-called 
Opium War with China* (1839- 1842). As a result of this war 

1 A recent writer makes the following noteworthy comment on the unmixed char- 
acter of the population of Australia : " Australia is the only continent which the Anglo- 
Saxon possesses — the only continent which any one nation possesses — also the only 
continent on record which has ever had one race, one language, and one government." 

2 By the census of 1901 the population of the British Indian Empire (this includes 
the feudatory states) was 294,46:, 056 ; by the census of ion it was 315,156,396. 

8 England's endeavor here was to maintain Afghanistan as a buffer state between 
her Indian possessions and the expanding Russian Empire. The war was marked by 
a great tragedy, — the virtual annihilation in the wild mountain passes leading from 
India to Afghanistan of an Anglo-Indian army of 16,000 men. There was a second 
Afghan War in 1879-1SS0. 

4 The opium traffic between India and Chma had grown into gigantic proportions 
and had become a source of wealth to the British merchants and of revenue to the 



§ 672] ENGLAND IN ASIA 593 

England obtained by cession from China the island and port of 
Hongkong, which she has made one of the most important com- 
mercial and naval stations of her Empire. 

Scarcely was the Opium War ended before England was in- 
volved in a gigantic struggle with Russia, — the Crimean War, 
already spoken of in connection with Russian history (sect. 651). 
From our present standpoint we can better understand why Eng- 
land threw herself into the conflict on the side of Turkey. She 
fought to maintain the integrity of the Ottoman Empire in order 
that her own great rival, Russia, might be prevented from seizing 
Constantinople and the Bosphorus, and from that point con- 
trolling the affairs of Asia through the command of the eastern 
Mediterranean. 

The echoes of the Crimean War had scarcely died away before 
England was startled by the most alarming intelligence from the 
country for the secure possession of which English soldiers had 
borne their part in the fierce struggle before Sevastopol. In 1857 
there broke out in the armies of the East India Company what 
is known as the Sepoy Mutiny.^ Fortunately many of the native 
regiments stood firm in their allegiance to England, and with 
their aid the revolt was speedily crushed. As a consequence of 
the mutiny the government of India was by act of Parliament 
taken out of the hands of the East India Company and vested in 
the English crown. 

Indian government. The Chinese government, however, awake to the evils of the 
growing use of the narcotic, resisted the importation of the drug. This was the cause 
of the war. The Chinese government was compelled to acquiesce in the continuance 
of the nefarious traffic. 

1 The causes of the uprising were various. The crowd of deposed princes was one 
element of discontent. A widespread conviction among the natives, awakened by different 
acts of the English, that their religion was in danger was another of the causes that led 
to the rebellion. There were also military grievances of which the native soldiers com- 
plained. The mutiny broke out simultaneously at different points. The atrocities com- 
mitted by the rebels at Cawnpur sent a thrill of horror throughout the civilized world. 
Nana Sahib had slain the garrison and crowded about two hundred English women and 
children into a small chamber. Fearing that the English forces, advancing by forced 
marches under General Henry Havelock, would effect a rescue of the prisoners, Nana 
Sahib employed five assassins to go into the room and kill them all. Then the bodies 
were dragged out and flung into a neighboring well, where they were found by the 
rescuing party, which arrived just too late to prevent the tragedy. 



594 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§673 

There are without question offsets to the indisputably good 
results of English rule in India; nevertheless it is one of the most 
important facts of modern history, and one of special import as 
bearing on our present study, that over three hundred millions 
of the population of Asia should thus have passed under the rule 
and wardship of a European nation. 

673. England in South Africa; Boer and Briton. England 
has played a great part in the partition of Africa. Her first 
appearance upon the continent, both in Egypt and at the Cape, 
was brought about through her solicitude for her East India pos- 
sessions and the security of her routes thither. Later she joined 
in the scramble of European powers for African territories for 
their own sake. 

The Dutch had preceded the English in South Africa. They 
began their settlement at the Cape about the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, in the great days of Holland. During the French 
Revolution and again during Napoleon's ascendancy the English 
took the Dutch colony under their protection. After the down- 
fall of Napoleon in 1814 the colony was ceded to England by 
the Netherlands.^ 

The Dutch settlers refused to become reconciled to the English 
rule. In 1836 a large number of these aggrieved colonists took 
the heroic resolve of abandoning their old homes and going out 
into the African wilderness in search of new ones. This was a 
resolution worthy of their ancestry, for these African Pilgrims 
were descendants of those Dutch patriots who fought so hero- 
ically against Philip II, and of Huguenot refugees who in the 
seventeenth century fled from France to escape the tyranny of 
Louis XIV (sect. 404). 

This migration is known as "The Great Trek."- The immi- 
grants journeyed from the Cape towards the northeast, driving 
their herds before them and carrying their women and children 

1 After the loss of the Cape Settlement, the island of Java was the most important 
colonial possession remaining to the Dutch. Gradually they got possession of the 
greater part of the large island of Sumatra. These two islands form the heart of the 
Dutch East Indies of to-day, which embrace a native population of about 36,000,000. 

2 Ttek is Dutch for " migration "' or " journey." 



§ 673] ENGLAND IN SOUTH AFRICA 595 

and all their earthly goods in great clumsy oxcarts. Beyond the 
Orange River some of the immigrants unyoked their oxen and 
set up homes, laying there the basis of the Orange Free State; 
the more intrepid 'trekked" still farther to the north, across the 
Vaal River, and established the republic of the Transvaal. 

Two generations passed, a period filled for the little republics, 
surrounded by hostile African tribes, with anxieties and fighting. 
Then there came a turning point in their history. In the year 
1885 gold desposits of extraordinary richness were discovered in 
the Transvaal. Straightway there began a tremendous inrush of 
miners and adventurers from all parts of the globe. 

A great portion of these newcomers were English-speaking 
people. As aliens — Uitlanders, "outlanders," they were called 
— they were excluded from any share in the government, although 
they made up two thirds of the population of the little state and 
paid the greater part of the taxes. They demanded the fran- 
chise. The Boers, under the lead of the sturdy President of the 
Transvaal, Paul Kriiger, refused to accede to their demands, urg- 
ing that this would mean practically the surrender of the inde- 
pendence of the Republic and its annexation to the British 
Empire. 

The controversy grew more and more bitter and soon ripened 
into war between England and the Transvaal ( 1899) . The Orange 
Free State joined its little army to that of its sister state. ^ After 
the maintenance of the struggle for over two years the last of 
the Boer bands surrendered (1902). As the outcome of the war 
both of the republics were annexed to the British Empire under 
the names of the Transvaal Colony and the Orange River Colony. 

Only a few years had passed after the close of the war when 
the British government very wisely granted the two colonies 
self-government.- Straightway these states and Cape Colony with 
Natal joined in the creation of a federal commonwealth under the 

1 The total European or white population of the two little republics that thus 
threw down the gage of battle to the most powerful empire of modern times was 
only a little over 300,000. 

2 Responsible government was granted to the Transvaal in 1906 and to the Orange 
Free State in 1907. 



596 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§ 674 

name of the Union of South Africa' (1910). Thus was consum- 
mated the favorite project of the South African statesman Cecil 
Rhodes (i 853-1902), the "empire builder," one of the most 
masterful men of his generation. 

The act of the British government in intrusting the Boers 
with a responsible government won in such measure their loyalty 
to the Empire that at the outbreak of the great European war 
in 1 9 14 they rallied — though not quite unanimously — to the 
support of England, and in the name of the Empire conquered 
German Southwest and German East Africa. 

One of the most important enterprises of the English in Africa 
is the building of a Cape-to-Cairo railroad. This, like the political 
scheme of a federation, was also a favorite project of Cecil Rhodes. 
Already his dream has been in great part realized. This railway 
when completed, as without doubt it will be at no remote date, 
will be a potent factor in the opening up of the Dark Continent 
to civilization. 

674. England in Egypt. In 1876 England and France estab- 
lished a joint control over Egypt in order to secure against loss 
their subjects who were holders of Egyptian bonds." Six years 
later, in 1882, there broke out in the Egyptian army a mutiny 
against the authority of the Khedive. France declining to act 
with England in suppressing the disorder, England moved alone 
in the matter. As a result the Anglo-French control became a 
sole British control.'^ 

No part of the world has benefited more by European control 

than Egypt. When England assumed the administration of its 

affairs it was in every respect one of the most wretched of the 

"lands under the rule, actual or nominal, of the Turkish Sultan. 

The country is now more prosperous than at any previous period 

1 The population of the Union according to the census of 191 1 is about 7,000,000, 
of which about 1,250,000 are of European stock and the rest native or colored. Gold 
and diamond mining is the leading industry. 

- Egypt was at that time nominally an hereditary principality under the suzerainty of 
the Ottoman Porte. 

■^ The great European war brought to an end the nominal suzerainty of the Ottoman 
Porte over Egypt. Turkey having entered the war on the side of Germany and her 
allies. Great Britain declared an actual protectorate over the country (1914). 



§ 675] FRANCE IN AFRICA 597 

of its history, not excepting the time of the rule of the Pharaohs. 
This high degree of prosperity has been secured mainly through 
England's having given Egypt the two things declared necessary 
to its prosperity, — "justice and water." 

The construction of the great irrigation or storage dam across 
the Nile at the First Cataract (at Assuan) is one of the greatest 
engineering achievements of modern times. The dam retains the 
surplus waters of the Nile in flood times and releases them grad- 
ually during the months of low water. This constant supply of 
water for irrigation purposes will, it is estimated, increase by a 
third the agricultural capabilities of Egypt not only by greatly 
augmenting the area of fertile soil but by making it possible on 
much of the land to raise two and even three crops each year. 

III. THE EXPANSION OF FRANCE 

675. France in Africa. At the opening of the nineteenth 
century France possessed only fragments of a once promising 
colonial empire. From the long Napoleonic Wars she emerged 
too exhausted to give any attention for a time to interests out- 
side of the homeland. 

When finally she began to look about her for over-the-sea ter- 
ritories to make good her losses in America and Asia, it was the 
North African shore that, on account of proximity, climate, and 
products, naturally attracted her attention. This region possesses 
great agricultural resources. In ancient times it was one of the 
richest grain-tribute-paying provinces of the Roman Empire. Its 
climate is favorable for Latin-European settlement. It is really 
geographically a part of Europe, "the true Africa beginning with 
the Sahara." 

France began the conquest of Algeria as early as 1830. The 
subjugation of the country was not effected without much hard 
fighting with the native tribes and a great expenditure in men 
and money. In the year 1881, assigning as a reason for the step 
the necessity of defending her Algerian frontier against the raids 
of the mountain tribes of Tunis on the east, France sent troops 



598 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§675 

into that country and established a protectorate over it. This act 
of hers deeply offended the Italians, who had had their eye upon 
this district, regarding it as belonging to them by virtue of its 
geographical position as well as its historical traditions/ 

In 191 1 France established a protectorate over Morocco. The 
international dispute, stirred up by Germany, which arose over 
this matter was one of the antecedents of the war of 1914-1919. 
In a later chapter, where we shall speak of the underlying causes 
of this tremendous conflict, we shall give a more detailed account 
of this controversy. 

These North African territories form the most promising por- 
tion of France's new colonial empire.' The more sanguine of her 
statesmen entertain hopes of ultimately creating here a new home 
for the French people, — a sort of New France. In any event it 
seems certain that all these shore lands, which in the seventh cen- 
tury were severed from Europe by the Arabian conquests, are now 
again permanently reunited to that continent and are henceforth 
virtually to constitute a part of the European world. 

Besides these lands in North Africa, France possesses a vast 
domain in the region of the Senegal and lays claim to all the 
Sahara lying between her colony of Senegal and Algeria. She also 
holds extensive territories just north of the Congo Free State, 
embracing part of central Sudan, besides less important patches 
of territory in other parts of the continent.^ The great island of 
Madagascar also forms a part of the French-African empire. 



1 Disappointed in not getting Tunis, the Italians sought to secure a foothold on 
the Red Sea coast. They seized here a district and organized it under the name of the 
Colony of Eritrea. To the southeast they also took possession of a long strip of coast 
land (Somaliland). But they had hard luck almost from the first. The coast is hot and 
unhealthy, and inland is the kingdom of Abyssinia. Over this the Italians attempted to 
establish a protectorate ; but unfortunately for them Abyssinia does not regard herself 
as one of the uncivilized or moribund states over which it is necessary for Europeans 
to extend their protection. King Menelik of that country inflicted upon the Italian 
army a most disastrous defeat (i8q6). The matter of the seizure by the Italians of 
Tripoli in northern Africa will be touched upon in another connection (see sect. 706). 

2 In Algeria and Tunis the vine and olive culture is being developed in a wonderful 
manner. 

3 The French were anxious to extend their authority eastward to the Nile, and in 
order to secure a claim to that region an expedition under Major Marchand made an 



§ 676] FRANCE IN ASIA 599 

676. France in Asia. In the year 1862 France secured a 
foothold near the mouth of the Cambodia River in Indo-China 
and then steadily enlarged her possessions until by the close of 
the nineteenth century she held in those quarters territories which 
exceeded in extent the homeland. A chief aim of the French in 
this region is to secure the trade of southern China. 

With these ample African and Asiatic territories France feels 
in a measure consoled for her losses in the past, and dreams of a 
brilliant career as one of the great colonizing powers of Europe. 
France has, however, one great handicap as a colonizing state. 
She has not, what England has, a rapidly increasing population. 
Nor have her citizens that restless, adventurous spirit of the 
Anglo-Saxons which has driven them as conquerors and settlers 
into the remotest parts of the earth and made England the mother 
of innumerable colonies and states. 



IV. THE EXPANSION OF GERMANY 

677. German Emigrants lost to Germany. No country of 
Europe during the expansion movement which we are following 
supplied a greater number of emigrants for the settlement of 
transoceanic lands than Germany. But Germany did not until 
late in the nineteenth century possess under her own flag any 
over-the-sea territories, and consequently the vast number of 
emigrants she sent out sought homes in the United States, in the 
different English colonies, in the Spanish and Portuguese republics 
of South America, and even in the Asiatic provinces of the Otto- 
man Empire. Thus it happened that although Germany during 
the earlier expansion period sent out swarms of emigrants no true 
Greater Germany grew up outside of Europe. 

adventurous march through central Africa to the Nile and raised the French flag at 
Fashoda. But French ambition here crossed English interests. France established on 
the Upper Nile would be in a position to menace the security of Egypt, while a French 
land route across equatorial Africa, such as the French had in mind, would be an obstruc- 
tion to England's projected Cape-to-Cairo road. After some sharp diplomatic exchanges 
between the French and English governments the French gave up all claim to any part 
of the Nile valley, and the " Fashoda incident," as it was called, was closed. 



600 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§678 

But stimulated by the war of 1870-187 1 against France, and 
the consolidation of the German Empire, German statesmen 
began to dream of making Germany a world power. To this end 
it was deemed necessary to secure for Germany colonies where the 
German emigrants might live under the German flag and, instead 
of contributing to the growth and prosperity of other states, should 
remain Germans and constitute a part of the German nation. 

678. Germany in Africa and in Asia. Consequently when in 
the last quarter of the nineteenth century the competition began 
for African territory, Germany entered into the struggle with 
great zeal and got a considerable share of the spoils. In 1884 she 
declared a protectorate over a large region of the southwest coast 
of the continent just north of the Orange River, and thus lying 
partly in the temperate zone.^ This colony was known as German 
Southwest Africa. At about the same time Germany established 
two smaller protectorates on the west coast, near the equator. On 
the eastern coast of the continent she took possession of a great 
territory, twice as large as Germany itself, embracing a part of the 
celebrated Lake District, a region well adapted to European settle- 
ment. This territory was named .German East Africa. 

In 1897 Germany, on the pretext of protecting German mis- 
sionaries in China, seized the port of Kiau-chau and forced its 
practical cession from the Chinese government. This is a spot of 
great importance commercially and politically. The German gov- 
ernment aimed to make this colony a true German settlement and 
the outgoing point of German power and influence in the Far East.- 

Such was the position of Germany in the colonial world at the 
opening of the World War. How that conflict affected her colonial 
aspirations and expansion projects will appear in a later chapter. 

1 In 1904 the German government was forced to face a serious revolt of some of 
the native tribes of the protectorate, which was suppressed only after three years of 
cruel warfare. The natives were virtually exterminated. The number of German 
colonists in the territory at the beginning of the war of 1914 was about 10,000. 

'- Besides the colonial possessions we have named, Germany, before the war of 1914, 
held a number of islands and groups of islands in the Pacific. She had also secured 
such predominant industrial and political influence in Asian Turkey as to make the 
Ottoman Empire almost a (lerman dependency, a matter which will best be considered 
when we come to examine the causes and antecedents of the World War. 



§ 679] RUSSIAN EXPANSION IN ASIA* 6oi 

V. THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA 

679. Russian Expansion in Asia. Russia has large and 
numerous inland lakes and seas and vast rivers, but she lacks 
seaboard. Her efforts to reach the sea in different directions is, as 
we have learned, the key to much of her history. It is this which 
has given a special character to Russian expansion, — which has 
made it a movement by land instead of by sea, as in the case of 
all the other European states that have had a part in the great 
expansion movement. 

Russia made no material territorial gains in Europe, aside 
from the acquisition of Finland and part of Prussian Poland, 
during the nineteenth century, although, as we have seen, she 
fought in three great wars for this end and shattered into frag- 
ments the Turkish Empire, which lay between her and the goal 
of her ambition, — Constantinople. But in Asia the additions 
which, during this period, she made to her empire were immense 
in extent. By the middle of the century she had absorbed a great 
part of the Caucasus region, encroaching here upon both Persia 
and Turkey in Asia. During the latter half of the century she 
steadily pushed forward her boundaries in central Asia. She 
conquered or conciliated the tribes of Turkestan and advanced 
her frontier in this quarter far towards the south, — close up 
against Afghanistan. In the very heart of the continent her out- 
posts were established upon the lofty table-lands of the Pamirs, 
the "Roof of the World." In the extreme eastern part of Asia 
she obtained from China, under circumstances which will be ex- 
plained a little farther on (sect. 687), the lease of Port Arthur, 
one of the most important Asiatic harbors on the Pacific, and 
occupied the large Chinese province of INIanchuria. 

Thus by the opening of the twentieth century Russia in her 
expansion had not only subjugated the nomadic or semi-nomadic 
tribes of central Asia but had also won territories from the three 
semicivilized or backward states of the continent, — Turkey, 
Persia, and China, — and was crowding heavily upon all those 
countries. 



6o2 ' EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§ 680 

680. The Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia's most note- 
worthy undertaking during the nineteenth century in connection 
with her Asiatic empire was the building of the Trans-Siberian 
Railway, which unites Petrograd with the Pacific ports of Vladi- 
vostok and Port Arthur (since 1905 in possession of Japan). 
The construction of this road has made accessible to Russian 
settlers the vast fertile regions of southern Siberia, and before the 
great European war paralyzed Russian life was fast making that 
country a part of the civilized world; for though it may be true 
as to the past that "civilization has come riding on a gun car- 
riage," now it comes riding on a locomotive. 

VI. THE EXPANSION OF THE UNITED STATES 

681. The Growth of the United States a Part of the Great 
European Expansion Movement. At first view it might seem 
that the growth of our own country should not be given a place 
in the present chapter. But the expansion of the United States 
is as truly a part of European expansion as is the increase of the 
English race in Canada, or in Australasia, or in South Africa. 
The circumstance that the development here has taken place since 
the severance of all political ties binding this country to the 
motherland is wholly immaterial. The Canadian, Australian, 
and African developments have also, as a matter of fact, been 
expansion movements from practically secondary and independent 
centers of European settlement. 

Hence to complete our survey of the movement which has put 
in possession or in control of the European peoples so much of 
the earth, we must note — we can simply note — the expansion 
during the past century of the great American Commonwealth. 

682. How the Territorial Acquisitions of the United States 
and its Growth in Population have contributed to assure the 
Predominance of the Anglo-Saxon Race in Greater Europe. 
Seven times during the nineteenth and the early twentieth century 
the United States enlarged her borders.^ These gains in territory 

1 The last increase in territory was in 19 17, when the United States secured by pur- 
chase the Danish West Indian islands — St. Croix, St. Thomas, and St. John. 




120 Lonnilude 100 W>,1 from 80 Greenwich 60 




ANGtO-SAXOX : Great Gritain 
tATIN : France, Italy, Spain ete. 



Indep't Latin Countries, I ] 

SLAVOMC ! Russia, I 

Germany, I 1 Other European Countries and their Colonies, CTa 

This Map is intended to show : First, how pxeat a portion of the world has come 
to be occupied or to be dominated by peoples of European descent ; and, 
second, to indicate particulaily the relative areas held by Saxon. Latin, and Slav. 



60 Lonjilude 80 Eiae from 100 Greenwich 120 



§ 683] SHALL CHINA BE PARTITIONED ? 603 

were in the main at the expense of a Latin race, — the Spanish, 
They have not therefore resulted in an actual increase in the 
possessions of the European peoples, but have simply contributed 
to the ascendancy, in this new-forming European world, of a 
people predominantly Anglo-Saxon in race. 

Of even greater significance than the territorial expansion of 
the United States during the last century is the amazing growth 
of the Republic during this period in population and in material 
and intellectual resources. At the opening of the nineteenth cen- 
tury the white population of the United States was a little over 
four millions; by igio it had risen to over eighty-one millions. 
This is the largest aggregate of human force and intelligence that 
the world has yet seen. Even more impressive than its actual 
are its potential capacities. With practically unlimited room for 
expansion, it is impossible adequately to realize into what, during 
the coming centuries, the American people will grow. 

This remarkable growth of an English-speaking nation on the 
soil of the New World has contributed more than anything else, 
save the expansion of Great Britain into Greater Britain, to lend 
impressiveness and import to the movement indicated by the 
expression "European expansion." 

VII. CHECK TO EUROPEAN EXPANSION AND AGGRESSION 
IN EASTERN ASIA 

683. Shall China be partitioned? Before the close of the 
nineteenth century the outward movement of the European 
peoples, which we have now traced in broad outlines, had created 
a great crisis in the life of the peoples of the Far East. It had 
imperiled the independence of one of the great races of mankind, 
the Yellow, or Mongolian, Race, comprising perhaps one third of 
the population of the earth. It had raised the question. Shall 
China be partitioned ? Shall the Mongolian peoples of the Far 
East be dominated and their destinies shaped by the European 
powers? An unexpected answer to these questions was given 
by Japan. 



604 ^ EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§684 

684. The Awakening of Japan. As late as the middle of the 
nineteenth century Japan was a hermit nation. She jealously ex- 
cluded foreigners and refused to enter into diplomatic relations 
with the Western powers. But in the year 1854 Commodore 
Perry of the United States secured from the Japanese govern- 
ment concessions which opened the country to Western influ- 
ences, under which Japan soon awoke to a new life. 

In the course of the half century following this change in 
Japanese policy, the progress made by Japan on all lines, polit- 
ical, material, and intellectual, was something without a parallel 
in history. She transformed her ancient feudal divine-right gov- 
ernment into a constitutional system modeled upon the political 
institutions of the West. She adopted almost entire the material 
side of the civilization of the Western nations and eagerly absorbed 
their sciences. 

But what took place, it should be carefully noted, was^ not a 
Europeanization of Japan. The new Japan was an evolution of 
the old. The Japanese to-day in their innermost life, in their 
deepest instincts, and in their modes of thought are still an 
oriental people. 

685. The China- Japan War of 1894 ; a Mongolian Monroe 
Doctrine. In 1894 came the war between Japan and China. A 
chief cause of this war was China's claim to suzerainty over 
Korea and her efforts to secure control of the affairs of that 
country. But under the conditions of modern warfare, and par- 
ticularly in view of the Russian advance in eastern Asia, the 
maintenance of Korea as an independent state seemed to Japan 
absolutely necessary to the security of her island empire. The 
situation is vividly pictured in these words of a Japanese states- 
man. "Any hostile power," he says, "in occupation of the penin- 
sula might easily throw an army into Japan, for Korea lies like 
a dagger ever pointed toward the very heart of Japan." 

Still again, realizing that greed of territory would lead the Euro- 
pean powers sooner or later to seek the partition of China and the 
political control of the Mongolian lands of the Far East, Japan 
wished to stir China from her lethargy, make herself her adviser 



§ 686] THE BOXER UPRISING 605 

and leader, and thus get in a position to control the affairs of 
eastern Asia. In a word, she was resolved to set up a sort of 
Monroe Doctrine in her part of the world, which should close 
Mongolian lands against European encroachments and preserve 
for Asiatics what was still left of Asia. 

The war was short and decisive. It was a fight between David 
and Goliath. China with her great inert mass was absolutely help- 
less in the hands of her tiny antagonist. With the Japanese army 
in full march upon Peking, the Chinese government was forced to 
sue for peace. China now recognized the independence of Korea, 
and ceded to Japan Formosa and the extreme southern part of 
Manchuria, including Port Arthur. But at this juncture of affairs 
Russia, supported by France and Germany, jealously intervened. 
These powers forced Japan to accept a money indemnity in lieu of 
territory on the continent. She was permitted, however, to take 
possession of the island of Formosa. 

- 686. China yi Process of Dismemberment; the Boxer Up- 
rising (i9oo). The march of the little Japanese army into the 
heart of the huge Chinese Empire was in its consequences some- 
thing like the famous march of the Ten Thousand Greeks through 
the great Persian Empire. It revealed the surprising weakness of 
China, — a fact known before to all the world, but never so per- 
fectly realized as after the Japanese exploit, — and marked her 
out for partition. The process of dismemberment began without 
unnecessary delay. Germany, Russia, England, and France each 
demanded and received from China the cession or lease of a port. 
The press in Europe and America began openly to discuss the 
impending partition of the Chinese Empire and to speculate as 
to how the spoils would be divided. 

Suddenly the whole Western world was startled by the intelli- 
gence that the legations, or embassies, of all the European powers 
at Peking were hemmed in and besieged by a Chinese mob aided 
by the imperial troops. Then quickly followed a report of the 
massacre of all the Europeans in the city. 

Strenuous efforts were at once made by the different Western 
nations, as well as by Japan, to send an international force to the 



6o6 



EUROPEAN EXPANSION 



[§687 



rescue of their representatives and the missionaries and other 
Europeans with them, should it chance that any were still alive. 
Not since the Crusades had so many European nations joined in 

a common undertaking. There were 
in the relief army Russian, French, 
English, American, and German 
troops, besides a strt)ng Japanese 
contingent. The relief column fought 
its way through to Peking and forced 
the gates of the capital. The worst 
had not happened, and soon the 
tension of the Western world, which 
had lasted for six weeks, was relieved 
by the glad news of the rescue of 
the beleaguered little company of 
Europeans. 

All which it concerns us now to 
notice is the place which this remark- 
able passage in Chinese history holds 
in the story of European expansion 
which we have been rehearsing. The 
point of view to which our study has 
brought us discloses this at once : 
The insurrection had at bottom for 
its cause the determination of the 
Chinese to set a limit to the en- 
croachments of the Western races, 
to exclude all foreign influences, 
to prevent the dismemberment of 
their country, to preserve China for 
the Chinese. All the various causes that have been assigned for 
the uprising are included in this general underlying cause. 

687. The Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Early in the 
year 1904 war opened between Japan and Russia. Respecting 
the fundamental cause of this conflict, little need be added to what 
has already been said in the preceding pages. Soon after Russia 




Fig. 107. Field Marshal 
Oyama. (From stereograph, 
copyright, 1904, by the H. C. 
White Company, New York) 




Scale of "111168 



§ 687] THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR 607 

had forced Japan to give up Port Arthur and the territory in 
Manchuria ceded to her by the terms of the treaty with China 
after the Chino-Japanese War of 1894 (sect. 685), she herself 
secured from China a lease of the most ''strategic portion" of 
this same territory, and straightway proceeded to transform Port 
Arthur into a great naval and military fortress, which was to 
be the Gibraltar of the East. Moreover, she occupied the whole 
of the great Chinese province of Manchuria. Notwithstanding 
she had given solemn pledges that the occupation of this territory 
should be only temporary, she not only violated these pledges 
but made it evident by her acts that she intended, besides mak- 
ing Manchuria a part of the Russian Empire, also to seize Korea. 
But Russian control of this stretch of seaboard and command 
of the Eastern seas meant that Japan would be hemmed in by 
a perpetual blockade and her existence as an independent nation 
imperiled. It would place her destiny in the hands of Russia. 
Japan could not accept this fate, and drew the sword. 

The sanguinary war was signalized by an unbroken series of 
astonishing victories for the Japanese on land and on sea. They 
assumed practical control of Korea, and under Field Marshal 
Oyama wrested from the Russian armies under Kuropatkin the 
southernmost portion of Manchuria. Port Arthur, after one of 
the longest and most memorable sieges of modern times, was 
forced to capitulate.^ 

The strong Russian fleet in the Eastern waters at the beginning 
of hostilities was virtually destroyed. A second great fleet sent 
out from the Baltic Sea was met in the Korean Straits by the 
Japanese fleet under Admiral Togo, and the greater part of the 
ships were sunk or captured. - 

Through the mediation of President Roosevelt peace envoys 
of Russia and Japan were now brought together at Portsmouth, 



^ January ii, 1905. The siege was conducted by General Nogi and Admiral Togo; 
the defense of the place was made by General Stoessel. A little later this same year 
was fought the great battle of Mukden, in which the Japanese were victors. 

2 In the sea fight of Tsushima, May 27-29, 1905. The Russian fleet was commanded 
by Admiral Rojestvensky. 



6o8 EUROPEAN EXPANSION [§ 688 

in the United States, and the war was brought to a close by the 
signing of what is known as the Peace of Portsmouth/ 

688. Some Results of the War; Establishment of the 
Chinese Republic. The war had momentous results. It lifted 
Japan to the position of a great power. It set limits to European 
encroachments in eastern Asia, and established the doctrine of 
"Asia for the Asiatics." It gave assurance that the Yellow Race 
should not, like the Red and Black Races, become subject to 
the White Race, but should, in self-determined and self-directed 
activity, play an independent part in the history of future times. 

Especially important were the consequences of the war for the 
Chinese Empire. The effect upon China of Japan's triumph 
over the giant Russian Empire was electric. A national conscious- 
ness was awakened, and important educational, moral, and govern- 
mental reforms were set on foot. The old system of education 
was done away with, and the sciences of the West were substituted 
for the ancient classics. Thousands of the Chinese youth sought 
the new knowledge in the schools of Japan, the United States, and 
Europe. In 191 2 the Manchu dynasty, now weak, corrupt, and 
discredited by the circumstances of the Boxer trouble, was over- 
thrown, the ancient monarchy abolished, and a Republic, molded 
on that of the United States, proclaimed.- 

Even more fateful was the war in its reaction upon Europe. 
In a way that has already been explained (sect. 656), it gave a 
great impulse to the Liberal movement in Russia. "Above all it 
[the Russian defeat] increased the self-confidence of Germany, 
and inspired her rulers with the dangerous conviction that the 
opposing forces with which they would have to deal in the ex- 
pected contest for the mastery of Europe could be more easily 

1 The treaty was signed September 5, 1905. Among the important articles of this 
treaty were the following : (i) permission to Japan to make Korea her ward (the country 
was annexed to the Japanese Empire in 1910) ; (2) the evacuation of Manchuria by both 
the Russians and the Japanese ; (3) the transfer to Japan by Russia of all her rights at 
Port Arthur and Dalny ; (4) the division of the Manchurian railway between Japan and 
Russia ; (5) the cession by Russia to Japan of the southern part of the island of Saghalien. 

2 The first president was Yuan Shih-K'ai (1912-1916). In 1915-1916 there was a con- 
spiracy to restore the monarchy, but the movement was defeated by a revolt in several 
of the province's. 



REFERENCES 609 

overcome than they had anticipated. To the Russian defeat must 
be attributed the blustering insolence of German policy during the 
next ten years, and the boldness of the final challenge in 1914."^ 

References. In citing references for the present chapter and the two 
following ones no attempt has been made to distinguish between primary and 
secondary authorities, for the reason that many of the works, since the writers 
are dealing chiefly with contemporary events and often with events of which 
they were a part, are of a mixed character. 

Works of a general character: Mokris, II. C, The Hisio/y of Colotiiza- 
tioti, 2 vols, (has a good bibliography). Ireland, A., Tropical Colonization. 
Bryce, J., The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind. 
Gibbons, H. A., The New Map of Africa and The A^ew Map of Asia. Muir, R., 
The Expansion of Eitrope. Hayes, C.J. H., A Political and Social -History of 
Modern Europe, vol. ii, chaps, xxvii-xxx. 

For the British Colonial Empire : Seeley, J. R., The Expansion of England. 
Caldecott, a., English Colonization and Empire. BoURINOT, J. G., Canada 
nnder British Rule, lybo-igoo. ]'S.^V.'i,Y.., History of the Australasian Colonies. 
Bryce, J., Impressions of South Africa. Lavelle, C. F., and Payne, C. E., 
Imperial Englatid, chaps, vii-xii. 

For Europe in Africa: Johnston, H. H., A History of the Colonization of 
Africa. Stanley, H. M., Thi-ough the Dark Contiftent, 2 vols., and The Congo 
and the Founding of its Free State. Keltie, J. S., The Partition of Africa. 
Milner, a., England in Egypt. Hughes, T., Livitigstone. Hazen, C. D., 
Modem European Histoiy, chap, xxviii. 

For Russia in Asia : Kennan, G., Siberia and the Exile System, 2 vols. 
Skrine, F. H., The Expatision of Russia, 181J-1QOO. 

For the Far East: Griffis, W. E., The Mikado's Empire, 2 vols., and 
The fapanese Nation in Evolution. AsAKAWA, The Russofapanese Confict. 
Reinsch, p. S., IVorld Politics at the End of the Nineteenth Century as 
influenced bv the Oriental Situation. 

Topics for Class Reports, i. The relation of the later European expan- 
sion to the new industry: Muir, R., The ILxpansioti of Europe, pp. 145-149. 

2. Liberia and Abyssinia: Gibbons, H. A., The New Map of Africa, chap. iv. 

3. The economic resources of South Africa: Bryce, J., Impressions of South 
Africa, chap. xxvi. 

1 Muir, The Expansion of Europe, p. 239. 



CHAPTER XLIII 
EVOLUTION TOWARD WORLD FEDERATION 

For I dipt into the future, far as human eye could see, 

Saw a Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be ; 

Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd 
In the Parliament of Man, the Federation of the World. — Tennyson 

689. Introductory. "It is a favorite maxim of mine," writes 
Professor Seeley in his Expansion of England, "that history, 
while it should be scientific in its method, should pursue a prac- 
tical object. That is, it should not merely gratify the reader's 
curiosity about the past but modify his view of the present and 
his forecast of the future. Now if this maxim be sound, the his- 
tory of England ought to end with something that might be called 
a moral. Some large conclusion ought to arise out of it; it ought 
to exhibit the general tendency of English affairs in such a way 
as to set us thinking about the future and divining the destiny 
which is reserved for us." 

The inspiring destiny for England which Professor Seeley reads 
in her past and present history is Imperial Federation, — that is, 
a great federal union embracing the motherland and her colonies, 
organized after the model of the United States of America. 

Professor Seeley's maxim must needs be applied to universal 
history if its study is to issue in anything really worthy and 
practical. We must try to discover the tendency of the historic 
evolution, to discern the set of the current of world events, and 
to divine the destiny reserved for the human race. Only thus 
shall we be able to form practical ideals for humanity and strive 
intelligently and hopefully for their realization. 

690. The Movement toward World Unity. Now, there is 
no tendency in universal history, broadly viewed, more manifest 

6io 



§690] MOVEMENT TOWARD WORLD UNITY 6ii 

than the tendency toward world union. From the first appearance 
of man on the earth, the trend of human evolution has been 
toward a united world, a world organized for common effort and 
common achievement. In the beginning, the largest independent 
group was the clan. Abraham wandering over the lands of the 
East and waging war with a handful of kinsmen and servants is 
typical of this stage of human development. Then came the tribe, 
a group of clans; and then, in those regions where civilization 
made its first gains, appeared the city-state, as we find it in the 
Mesopotamian lands, in Syria and Palestine, in Greece and Italy, 
at the dawn of the historic age. For upwards of a thousand years 
the city-state was the ultimate political unit in the Mediterranean 
lands, which before the rise of the Macedonian power and the 
great extension of the Roman authority were the seat of hundreds 
of these little independent political communities. Then, if we 
disregard purely artificial unions, unions created and maintained 
by force, such as the Roman Empire, came the great nation-states 
of modern times, which since the break-up of the Roman Empire 
have been slowly created through the unification of tribes, cities, 
and petty principalities. 

During the past century a state of an essentially new type has 
arisen among these nation-states, — the federal state, of which our 
Union, consisting of forty-eight states, and the Swiss Confederation 
are typical. The formation of unions of this kind is such a marked 
characteristic of the last hundred years that this period has been 
called the Federal Age. Especially significant is it that during this 
time the British Empire, through the federalization of Canada, 
Australia, and British South Africa, and the new relation that 
England has assumed towards the various elements of her widely 
extended dominions, has lost the characteristics of an "Empire" 
and has become, or is becoming, what may rightly be called a 
Federal Commonwealth. 

The significant thing about this federal movement is that the 
natural and logical issue of national federalism is international 
federalism. The United States of America foreshadows the United 
States of the World. 



6i2 EVOLUTION TOWARD WORLD FEDERATION [§ 691 

69L Preparations in Different Domains for a Universal 
League of Nations. In truth, during the century preceding the 
World War, in different realms, the required conditions for a 
federation of all the nations of the earth had been largely created 
by humanity's advance and achievements. In the political realm 
all that the age-spirit had accomplished would seem to have had for 
its ultimate aim the preparing of the way for international feder- 
ation. More than a century ago Immanuel Kant, in his essay on 
Perpetual Peace, affirmed that a prerequisite for the federation 
of the world was the establishment by all the nations of a repub- 
lican form of government. If we recall what the union of the 
autocratic governments of Europe in the Holy Alliance meant 
(sect. 585), we shall understand Kant. A world union of des- 
potic governments would be the tomb of liberty, individual and 
national, — a world-wide autocratic despotism. 

When Kant wrote his plea for peace, autocratic government 
prevailed almost everywhere in Europe. We have seen how during 
the century following the Congress of Vienna the democratization 
of governments not only on that continent but almost everywhere 
went on apace, bringing the management of public affairs more 
or less completely into the hands of the people. Thus before the 
outbreak of the great war of 19 14 the first required condition of 
a universal league had been largely met in the case of a great part 
of the nations and communities of the civilized world. 

A second significant preparation, during the period under review, 
for world organization was the federation movement, of which 
we spoke in the last section, for federalism supplies the principle 
which may be applied to international organization without en- 
dangering the principle of home rule and legitimate national 
sovereignty, since it deprives the uniting states, as exemplified in 
our Union, of nothing save that lawless freedom which they have 
used to do one another hurt and harm. 

While the basis of a universal federation was thus being laid 
in the political domain through the incoming of democracy and 
federalism there was going on in the moral world an even more 
important preparation for world union. There was growing up 



§ 691] PREPARATIONS FOR LEAGUE OF NATIONS 613 



what has been called the international mind; men were begin- 
ning to think in world terms. There was, further, a deepening 
and strengthening, not universally, as we shall learn, but gen- 
erally and in the world at large, of the sentiment of human 
kinship, of international jus- 
tice and solidarity. There was 
developing, too, a new inter- 
national conscience, a con- 
science which, affirming the 
universality of the moral law, 
recognized that the principles 
of morality are the same for 
nations as for individuals. In 
this moral movement there 
was the promise and guarantee 
of a new world order. 

At the same time that these 
movements, so significant for 
world unity, were going on in 
the political and moral realms, 
in the physical domain won- 
derful discoveries and inven- 
tions, — the steam railway, the 
steamship, the telegraph, the 
telephone, wireless telegraphy, 
the airship, and a hundred 
others, — through the practical 
annihilation of time and space, 
were drawing the once isolated nations close together, and thus 
were making not only possible but increasingly necessary and 
inevitable international organization. 

1 In 1903 the South American republics of Chile and Argentina, having happily 
settled by arbitration a long-standing boundary controversy which threatened to involve 
the two countries in war, mutually bound themselves by treaty to reduce their military 
and naval armaments and for a stated period to submit every matter of dispute arising 
between them to arbitration. Upon one of the highest boundary ranges of the Andes 
the two nations have erected a colossal bronze statue of Christ as the sacred guardian 
of the peace to which they are pledged. The statue was unveiled March 13, 1904. 




Fig. 108. The Christ of the 

Andes.^ (From a photograph by 

Carolina Huidobro) 



6i4 EVOLUTION TOWARD WORLD FEDERATION [§692 

692. The First Hague Conference (i899). Even prior to the 
World War more had been accompHshed in the way of the 
creation of the machinery of a World State than is generally 
realized. Just as the nineteenth century was closing the Tsar 
Nicholas surprised the world by proposing to all the governments 
having representatives at the Russian court the meeting of a 
conference "to consider means of insuring the general peace of the 
world and of putting a limit to the progressive increase of arma- 
ments which weigh upon all nations." 

All the governments addressed, twenty-six in number, accepted 
the proposal and on the i8th of May, 1899, the Convention met 
in the famous " House in the Woods " at The Hague, in the Nether- 
lands. Owing to the opposition of Germany any action looking 
toward the general limitation of armaments was prevented.^ But 
the Convention did succeed in the establishment of a permanent 
International Court of Arbitration to which all nations might have 
recourse for the settlement of interstate disputes.- The Confer- 
ence also made provision for International Commissions of In- 
quiry, which were intended to ascertain the real facts in cases of 
threatening international controversies.^ 

693. The Second Hague Conference (1907). A second inter- 
national conference met at The Hague in 1907. Forty-four of 
the fifty and more sovereign and independent nations of the world 
were represented. One of the important achievements of the con- 
ference was the adoption of a proposal made by the delegates of 
the United States for the establishment of an International Court 

1 Germany was opposed to the proposal because she was better prepared for war 
than her neighbors and had in mind to use force, if need be, for the attainment of her 
ambitious projects. As has been affirmed, '' The conflict between Germany and the world 
began in 1899 at the First Hague Conference." 

2 Andrew Carnegie, recognizing the importance of the work of the Convention, 
made a gift of 1.1,500,000 for the erection at The Hague of a permanent home for the 
Court. The imposing structure is known as the "Temple of Peace." Prior to 1914 a 
number of international disputes which might have led to war were adjusted by the 
Court. 

3 It was through such a commission that a serious dispute between Great Britain 
and Russia, which arose out of an attack upon some English fishing smacks off the 
Dogger Bank in the North Sea, by ships of the Russian fleet on its way to Japan at the 
time of the Russo-Japanese War, was settled peacefully. 



§693] THE FIRST HAGUE CONFERENCE 615 

of Arbitral Justice, as a genuine court of law with permanent 
judges, to stand by the side of the Court of Arbitration created 
by the First Hague Conference. The jurisdiction and rules of 
procedure of the court were agreed upon, but unfortunately no 
agreement as to the number and mode of selection of the judges 
could be reached. However, a long step had been taken in the 
judicial organization of the world. Had the court been fully 
constituted and the submission to it of international disputes been 
made obligatory, — again it was the stubborn opposition of Ger- 
many that thwarted every effort to this end, — it is possible that 
the great tragedy which overwhelmed Europe in 19 14 would have 
been averted. 

The action of the conference respecting the periodic meeting 
of representatives of the nations was as follows: "The conference 
recommends to the powers the reunion of a third peace conference, 
which shall take place within a period analogous to that which has 
elapsed since the preceding conference, at a date fixed by common 
agreement among the powers." A true world legislature was in 
process of formation. 

Seven years after the close of the sessions of the Second Hague 
Convention the evolutionary movement towards world organi- 
zation was, in a way that could hardly have been foreseen, — 
through the agency of the most titanic and destructive war in 
all history, — given a great impulse, and thereby the goal of a 
federated world brought measurably nearer. This amazing and 
dramatic passage in universal history we shall briefly summarize 
in the next chapter. 

References. Fiske, J., American Political Ideas, lect. iii, " Manifest Destiny." 
Marburg, T., League of iVations. Holls, F. W., The Peace Conference at The 
Hague (a record of the Conference of 1S99). White, A. D., The First Hague 
Conference. Hull, W. I., The Two Hague Conferences. Choate, J. H., The 
Two Hague Conferences. ScoTT, J. B. (Ed.), American Addresses at the Second 
Hagtie Peace Conference. Bridgman, R. L., World Organization and The First 
Book of World Law. Minor, R. C, A Repttblic of Nations. Lawrence, T. J., 
The Society of Nations. 



CHAPTER XLIV 

THE WORLD WAR 

(1914-1918) 

I. CAUSES OF THE WAR AND TRAIN OF EVENTS 
LEADING UP TO IT 

694. The War's Place in History. In the midsummer of 19 14 
— henceforth one of the memorable dates of history — there broke 
out in Europe a war which at once involved five of the great 
powers of that continent and ultimately almost the whole of the 
civilized world. It will help us to realize the significance of this 
titanic struggle and to assign it its true place in history if we first 
note its relation to that revolutionary movement which began in 
England in the seventeenth century and of which the outstanding 
fact before this last convulsion was the French Revolution ; for 
it was this great drift in the life current of the race, despite 
dynastic interests and the personal ambitions of those upon whom 
rests the chief responsibility for the war, which gave the conflict 
its profoundest meaning and its world-wide range. 

As we have seen, two of the fundamental principles proclaimed 
by the Revolution were the principles of popular sovereignty, or 
government by the people for the people, and the principle of 
nationality, or the right of every nation to be master of its own 
destiny (sect. 581). 

Now, these basic principles of the Revolution were, as we shall 
see, the essential principles for which the nations fighting against 
Germany and her allies in the World War contended. This de- 
termines the place in history of the great conflict. It was the last 
act in the drama of what we have called the Political Revolution. 
This place in history which we assign the war will be seen to be 
its real place if we look more closely, as we shall now proceed to 
db, at some of the fundamental causes of the great war. 

616 



§695] DIVINE-RIGHT KINGSHIP AGAIN 617 

695. Divine-Right Kingship again and the Democratic 
Movement. During the nineteenth century the revolutionary 
idea of government by the people made conquest, as we have 
learned, of a great part of the world. Unhappily there were in 
Central Europe two states, Prussia and Austria, which repudiated 
the liberal principles of the Revolution and, under the mask of 
constitutional and parliamentary forms, remained the upholders of 
the old discredited regime of autocratic government. Of these two 
states Prussia alone, as the dominant power, need be noticed 
by us here. 

In an earlier chapter we saw how the royal Prussian House 
of Hohenzollern was raised by Prince Bismarck, through a policy 
of " blood and iron," first to the headship of Germany and then 
to the Imperial dignity.^ We also saw how the young Emperor 
William II, the third of the Hohenzollerns to wear the Imperial 
crown, shortly after the beginning of his reign, brusquely dis- 
missed the Imperial Chancellor, Prince Bismarck, and then began 
a very personal rule. The following utterances of the Emperor 
reveal the spirit and temper of his government : " I alone am 
master here; who opposes me I shall crush" (a sentiment ex- 
pressed by the young Emperor at the time he " dropped his pilot," 
Prince Bismarck). "We Hohenzollerns take our crown from God 
alone, and to God alone we are responsible in the fulfillment of 
duty." - " The spirit of the Lord has descended upon me because 
I am the Emperor of the Germans. I am the instrument of the 
Almighty, his sword, his agent. Woe and death to all those who 
oppose my will."^ 

Now, this is exactly the language of the divine-right Stuarts of 
England and the pre-revolutionary Bourbons of France,^ whose 
arrogant assumptions and unbearable tyranny did so much to 

1 See Chapter XXXIX. 

2 This was not merely Emperor William's personal interpretation of the German Con- 
stitution. The eminent German historian Eduard Meyer had said, "The power of Ger- 
many's monarchs must be unlimited, and they cannot therefore be responsible to man 
but to God alone." 

3 Proclamation by the Emperor to the army of the East at the beginning of the 
great war. 

^ Cf. sects. 397, 412. 



6i8 THE WORLD WAR [§ 696 

provoke the English and the French Revolution. The ideal of 
government, the mode of thinking, shown by these declarations 
was one of the deeper causes of the World War — for civilization 
cannot exist half autocratic and half democratic — and was what 
made it possible for President Wilson, when, in the third year of 
the unprecedented conflict, the United States entered the war, 
to define it as fundamentally a struggle between democracy and 
autocracy and to declare our aim and purpose in entering the 
war to be "to make the world safe for democracy."^ In doing 
this we were but carrying on toward completion the work so far 
advanced by the men of 1789. 

696. German Imperialism and the Nationalist Movement. 
It was not only the spirit of democracy but also the spirit of 
nationalism that was at work in the world at large during the 
hundred years and more preceding the great war. This period 
witnessed the rise and establishment of many nation-states, large 
and small. But while the world, broadly viewed, was being recon- 
structed in accordance with this great principle of nationalism and 
was advancing towards true democratic internationalism, towards 
a world-wide federation of free and equal nations, Germany, 
under Prussian influence and dominance, was relapsing into 
archaic imperialism and scheming for world dominion. " I hope 
it will be granted to our German Fatherland," these are the words 
of Emperor William II, " to become in the future as closely united, 
as powerful, and as authoritative as once the Roman world-empire 
was, and that, just as in old times one said, ' I am a Roman 
citizen,' hereafter, at some time in the future, one will say, 'I am 
a German citizen.' "- 

This dream of a world-empire was not the dream of the Hohen- 
zollerns alone ; it was the dream of an influential party in Ger- 
many made up of militarists, junkers, professors, publicists, and 

1 That this was the real character of the war was at first obscured by the fact that 
autocratic Russia was an ally of the liberal governments of western Europe ; but when, 
in 1917, the Romanoff dynasty was overthrown and Russia proclaimed a republic, though 
the republic was short-lived, the real issues involved became clear. 

2 Address of the Emperor at the laying of the comer stone of the Imperial Limes 
Museum at Saalburg, 1900. 




Longitude Yfeatjrom OreeDi^icb Longitude East icom Qxeenwlcli JO 



§697] GERMAN PRE-WAR IDEAS AND DOCTRINES 619 

industrial magnates, known as Pan-Germans, the maxim of many 
of whom at least was "World power or downfall."^ 

That the war was a supreme struggle between militaristic im- 
perialism and nationalism was not at first clearly perceived by 
those remote from its arena. But as the war progressed, the real 
issues involved were more and more clearly revealed, so that when, 
finally, the United States entered the war on the side of the 
Allies, President Wilson could declare its object to be " to deliver 
the free peoples of the world from the menace and the actual 
power of a vast military establishment controlled by an irre- 
sponsible government which, having secretly planned to dominate 
the world, proceeded to carry out the plan without regard either 
to the sacred obligations of treaty or the long-established prac- 
tices and long-cherished principles of international action and 
honor." ^ 

In a word, the war was a tremendous conflict in which the free 
peoples of the world fought to prevent the setting up of a revived 
Roman Empire that threatened to become, like Napoleon's em- 
pire, the tomb of the nations. So here again, in its relation to 
nationalism, is disclosed the relation of the World War to the 
Political Revolution. 

697. Some German Pre-War Ideas and Doctrines. But the 
war was something more than a conflict between autocracy and 
democracy, something more than a conflict between imperialism 
and nationalism. It was, further, a conflict of ideals, of irrecon- 
cilable philosophies of life and history, in which were imperiled 
the moral gains of centuries of human progress. This statement 
calls for an examination of some German pre-war ideas and 
teachings. 

We have seen how profound an influence philosophic id^s 
exerted upon the inception and the course of the French Revo- 
lution (sect. 501). Even more determinative in precipitating and 

1 A slogan drawn from the writings of a distinguished militarist, General Friedrich 
von Bernhardi, whose work entitled Genua?!}' and the Next War, published in 191 1, 
had a great influence in arousing an aggressive war spirit in Germany. 

2 Reply to the Pope's Peace Proposals, August 27, 1917. 



62 THE WORLD WAR [§ 697 

giving character to the great war of 19 14 were certain doctrines 
of a semi-scientific, political, and philosophical nature inculcated 
by pre-war German militarists, publicists, and leaders in German 
thought. Among these ideas was the conception that the German 
people are a superior race ordained to world dominion. Now this 
idea of an elect race is found commonly enough among primitive 
peoples; but no modern-minded person dreamed that this naive 
notion could find a place in the sober thoughts and reasoned con- 
victions of a civilized people of to-day. However, during the dec- 
ades following the Franco-Prussian War of 1 870-1 871 this notion 
did actually become a fixed element in the stock of ideas of an 
influential section of the German people. Here are some utter- 
ances of Emperor William II: "We are the chosen people"; 
"God created us that we might civilize the world"; "W^e are the 
salt of the earth." And thus speaks Rudolf Euchen, distinguished 
professor of philosophy at Jena : " We have the right to say that 
we form the soul of humanity, and that the destruction of the 
German nature would rob the world of its deepest meaning." With 
like assurance Ludwig Woltmann, a distinguished German scien- 
tist, declares, "The Teutons are the aristocracy of humanity; 
. . . the Teutonic race is called to circle the earth with its rule." 

These utterances are significant because they are commonplaces ; 
that is, merely typical expressions of ideas and sentiments that 
formed a characteristic element of a considerable part of the 
body of German thought of the two or three decades preceding 
the outbreak of the great war. 

What made this notion of German superiority in race and 
civilization a menace to the security and peace of the world was 
that those entertaining this idea conceived it to be the mission 
of the German people to spread the superior German Kultur^ 
over the earth by force of arms if necessary, and thus to make 
Germany the "mother country of the future civilization of the 
world." 

1 The term KiiHitr (kool-toor') cannot be translated by our word ciiliine. By it is 
meant the whole body of German institutions and the German way of thmlving and 
"doing things." 



§697] GERMAN PRE-WAR IDEAS AND DOCTRINES 621 

Another dangerous German teaching was that war is a necessary 
and divinely ordained factor in human history. '' War," said the 
militarist Friedrich von Bernhardi, " is not only a biological law 
but a moral obligation, and as such an indispensable factor in 
civilization." "War," said Marshal von Moltke, "is an element 
of the order of the world established by God. . . . Without war 
the world would stagnate and lose itself in materialism." It was 
this philosophy of war which, blinding the German people to the 
insanity and criminality of aggressive war, had much to do in 
letting loose upon Europe the immeasurable calamity of the 
World War. 

Still another sinister doctrine taught by many German pre- 
war philosophers was that the state in its relation to other states 
is not bound by the ordinary rules of morality. " Right and 
wrong," says an eminent German authority, "are notions needed 
in civil life only." "It will always conduce to the glory of 
Machiavelli," said the famous historian Treitschke, professor of 
history at the University of Berlin, at whose feet multitudes of Ger- 
man youth for many years received instruction in history and 
imbibed ideas of public morality, "... that he has freed the 
state and its morality from the precepts of the Church."^ This 
means that war may be waged without regard to treaties or inter- 
national law, without sentiment, pity, or mercy. Translated 
into practice in the great European war by the German militarists, 
this monstrous doctrine that war may be waged without regard 
to the restraints of law, humanity, or conscience produced that 
German policy of " frightfulness " which more than any other one 
thing aroused and arrayed against the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment the greater part of the civilized world and made the 
war on the part of the allied and associated powers a fight not 
only for democracy and nationalism but also for the preservation 
of the precious moral heritage of civilization. 

Having now indicated the place in universal history of the great 
war, pointed out its deeper causes, and noticed some German 
ideas and teachings which lay at the bottom of the lawless and 

1 See sect. 243. 



62 2 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 698 



inhuman methods of the German military authorities in the con- 
duct of the war, we will next trace the course of events that, during 
the early years of the twentieth century, marked the drift of 
Europe towards the abyss of the great catastrophe. 

698. "Central Europe" {Mittel-Europa) and the Berlin- 
Bagdad Railway. We have spoken of the Pan-Germanists' dream 




Asian Turkey and the Bagdad Railway 



of world domination. For the realization of this dream the Pan- 
Germanists, long before 19 14, had formed a definite and far- 
visioned plan. The leading feature of this plan was a projected 
union or federation of states embracing Germany, Austria- 
Hungary, and the Balkans, — a great wedge of lands dividing 
Europe into two parts and, with the Turkish Empire as an Asian 
extension, stretching from the North Sea to the Persian Gulf.'^ 
An important part of this stupendous project was the construc- 
tion of a railway from Constantinople across Asia Minor and 
Mesopotamia to Bagdad, and thence to some point on the Persian 

1 See map, p. 646 



§ 699] GERMANY BECOMES A SEA POWER 623 

Gulf. Concessions for the building of this road were secured by 
Germany just at the opening of the twentieth century. The 
road was far advanced toward completion by 19 14. The line 
was known as the Bagdad Railway. In connection with lines in 
Europe the road was to give rail communication between Berlin 
and Bagdad, and hence the entire project was known as the 
Berlin-Bagdad Railway. 

The realization of the project required, of course, the friendly 
cooperation of the Turkish government and the good will of the 
Mohammedan world. In this is found an explanation of the un- 
natural alliance between Germany and Turkey. In 1898 Emperor 
William II undertook a pious pilgrimage to Palestine. In a famous 
address made at Damascus he said : " May his Majesty the Sul- 
tan, as well as the three hundred million Moslems who venerate 
him as their Khalif, be assured that the German Emperor is their 
friend forever." Thus were the Mohammedans of Egypt, India, 
central Asia, and North Africa, restless perhaps under British or 
Russian or French rule, told to whom they should look as a friend 
and deliverer. 

The location of the Asian stretch of the Berlin-Bagdad Rail- 
way should be carefully noted. It follows closely the ancient mili- 
tary and trade route between the East and the West. Control of 
this highway gives control of Asia Minor, Mesopotamia, Syria, 
Palestine, and Egypt. Controlled by Germany, it menaced not 
only British authority in Egypt and India but also Russian in- 
terests in Persia and Asia Minor. It was this which made the 
German project a matter of such international concern and ren- 
dered it such a factor in bringing on the World War and in extend- 
ing the operations of the war into Mesopotamia and Palestine. 
As the conflict deepened, the important relation of this railway 
project to the German plan for world domination became more 
and more plainly revealed. 

699. Germany becomes a Sea Power. Even before the close 
of the nineteenth century Germany, already the greatest military 
power in Europe, turned her attention toward the sea. The kaiser 
declared : " Our future lies on the water. . . . The trident must 



624 THE WORLD WAR [§ 700 

pass into our hands." A great German merchant marine was 
created, and a vast and lucrative overseas trade developed. To 
protect her extended commerce in the event of war and to further 
her ambitious world policy, Germany began the creation of a 
navy. At the opening of the twentieth century her war fleet was 
second only to that of Great Britain.^ The British government 
became alarmed. The insular security of Great Britain seemed 
to be menaced, for, with only a small army, she must hold com- 
mand of the seas to be safe. A keen competition between the two 
nations in the construction of warships began. In this rivalry 
there was a distinct menace to world peace, since Germany re- 
pelled every proposal made by Great Britain for mutual limitation 
of naval armaments. 

700. The Triple Entente, or Good Understanding, between 
Great Britain, France, and Russia. Germany's constant increase 
of her navy, and her ambition for world domination as disclosed 
by the utterances of the German militarists and ruling classes, 
deepened the fears of Great Britain and caused her to abandon 
her policy of keeping aloof, in "splendid isolation," from conti- 
nental alliances, and to enter into what was in effect, though not 
in name, a defensive alliance with France and Russia. In 1904 
she settled all her long-standing troubles with France and reached 
a cordial understanding with her. 

Three years later Great Britain effected with Russia a like 
adjustment of all their conflicting interests in Persia, central Asia, 
and elsewhere. Great Britain now gave up all opposition to 
Russia's ambition to secure control of the waterways of the 
Bosphorus and Dardanelles. It was Germany now, with her am- 
bitious, far-reaching projects in Asian Turkey and her Bagdad 
Railway, that seemed to menace British possessions in both 
Egypt and India. Hence Great Britain's earlier opposition to 
Russian purposes was now directed against German plans of 
expansion eastward. 

These settlements and arrangements completed what is known 
as the Triple Entente, or good understanding, between Great 

1 The Kiel Canal was opened in 1895. 



§ 701] FIRST MOROCCAN CRISIS 625 

Britain, France, and Russia/ This accord between these ancient 
rivals was a matter of world-wide importance, for though it was 
purely a measure of defense against the German menace, Germany 
saw, or affected to see, in it only evidence of unfriendly inten- 
tions and a plot for her '' encirclement " and destruction. Hence- 
forth her hatred of Great Britain became ever more fixed and 
implacable. 

The six great powers- were now aligned in two groups, the 
members of each group so bound together by alliances or under- 
standings that a conflict arising between any two states of the 
opposing groups was almost certain to bring on a general Eu- 
ropean war. This is what helped to make so extended and so 
colossal the disaster that overwhelmed Europe in 19 14. 

701. First Moroccan Crisis (1905). Simultaneously with the 
formation of the Triple Entente, IVIorocco, a " decadent " state 
which, like Persia and Turkey, seemed marked out for commercial 
penetration or political control by its more vigorous and enter- 
prising neighbors, became the subject of a serious international 
controversy. The collision of interests here was between Germany 
on the one hand and France and Great Britain on the other. 
France had set her heart on the possession of this country in 
order to round out her African empire.^ When, in 1904, Great 
Britain and France entered into a mutual good understanding, 
this was one of the things settled. An agreement was reached 
whereby France gave Great Britain a free hand in Egypt in 
return for a free hand for herself in Morocco. 

The next year the German Emperor landed in his yacht, the 
Hohenzollern, at the Moroccan port of Tangier and made ad- 
dresses to the German traders and merchants there which were 
•meant for other ears besides theirs. His utterances were notice to 
Great Britain and France that in all arrangements and conven- 
tions respecting the remaining free states of the world Germany 
must be consulted. This was merely a reaffirmation of a previous 

1 France and Russia had drawn together and formed in 1891 a defensive alliance 
known as the Dual Alliance. 

2 xhe Triple Alliance, it will be recalled, embraced Germany, Austria-Hungary, and 
Italy (see sect. 646). 3 .See sect. 675 and map after page 58S. 



62 6 THE WORLD WAR [§ 702 

declaration that nothing of importance in the world at large should 
be arranged without the consent of Germany and the German 
Emperor. 

France, — though she felt that Germany's intervention was un- 
justifiable, — being uncertain of the armed support of Great 
Britain and knowing that her other ally, Russia, because of the 
defeat she had just suffered at the hands of Japan (sect. 687) was 
powerless to help her, made humiliating concessions to Germany ^ 
and agreed to the calling of an international convention to review 
the whole matter. The outcome of this meeting- was favorable 
for France. The representatives of the nations recognized her 
special and superior interest in Morocco and commissioned her 
to maintain order in that country. 

This Moroccan affair is a landmark in history, one of the 
outstanding facts of the decade preceding the outbreak of the 
great war. The crisis created by Germany's manner of interven- 
tion had, it is true, been passed safely, but important conse- 
quences resulted from her action. The good understanding 
between Great Britain, France, and Russia was cemented. It now 
became something like a real alliance. On the other hand, Ger- 
many's prestige had received a severe blow, and this caused her 
hatred of Great Britain, which had taken the side of France in 
the international convention, to become more intense and bitter. 

702. Some Factors of the Balkan Problem. Our attention is 
now directed to southeastern Europe, where was laid the train 
which started the frightful conflagration of the World War. The 
situation here at the opening of the twentieth century was be- 
wildering in the variety of the motives, interests, and aspirations 
of the peoples and governments concerned, but it will become in a 
measure intelligible if we bear in mind the following dominant' 
facts : 

First, the situation was one which concerned the relations of 
the several small Balkan states to Turkey. The Turkish provinces 

1 The French Premier, Delcasse, who had carried on the negotiations with the British 
government, was by Germany's threat of war forced to resign. 

2 The Convention of Algeciras, 1906. It was suggested by President Theodore 
Roosevelt. 



W 
O 



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g 








c 


e 






92 


J 1 C ^ 1 a 1 5 


gSi- 


Mfc; ■>>oei;'5Si<) 


















w 




















§ 702] FACTORS OF THE BALKAN PROBLEM 627 

adjoining these little states contained more than two million Chris- 
tian Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbians who longed for liberation 
from Ottoman oppression and for union with their emancipated 
brethren. Racial and religious antagonisms among the Christians 
themselves, especially in Macedonia, aggravated the disorder and 
wretchedness. 

Second, the situation was one which concerned more or less 
closely several of the great powers. Russia's old ambition to con- 
trol the waterways leading from the Black Sea to the iEgean was 
not only still active but was now more urgent than ever before, 
because her defeat by Japan had denied her a warm-water port on 
the Pacific. Great Britain no longer barred her way, but Germany 
was now interested in keeping these waterways out of her hands, 
since the Muscovite seated on the Bosphorus would imperil Ger- 
man interests in Asia Minor and defeat the great German project 
of a Berlin-Bagdad Railway. 

'Then the ambition of the Slav state of Serbia to unite all the 
people of Serbian race in a Greater Serbia, with outlets on the 
Adriatic and the ^gean, was a menace to the integrity of Austria- 
Hungary, for the neighboring provinces of the monarchy were 
largely Serbian in blood, in language, and in sympathies and 
would inevitably gravitate towards an enlarged and prosperous 
Serbia. In a word, Serbia was just such a present danger to 
Austria in the Balkans as Sardinia had been to her possessions in 
northern Italy in the nineteenth century.^ Just as Sardinia drew 
to herself the Italian subjects of Austria, so now Serbia threatened 
to draw to herself all the Serbian subjects of Austria-Hungary. 
Thus a Greater Serbia threatened the dismemberment of the 
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. Moreover, the establishment of 
a powerful Serbian state meant that Austria's coveted way to 
the ^gean would be barred ; for after Austria's expulsion from 
northern Italy, which had been for centuries the pathway of 
her Mediterranean trade, she had turned towards the East 
and had sought to secure an outlet across Macedonia to Saloniki 
on the i5*^gean. 

1 Cf. sects. 622-628. 



628 THE WORLD WAR [§ 703 

Besides the several interests of Russia, Germany, and Austria- 
Hungary in the Balkan problem, still another of the great powers, 
Itah^, was deeply concerned. Italy desired possession of Italia 
irredenta, "unredeenied Italy," which embraced lands on her 
northern Alpine frontier and about the head of the Adriatic, of 
which the population was largely Italian, but which were held by 
Austria just as once she held Lombardy and Venetia. Further- 
more, Italy was watchful to see that, with the Turks driven out 
of Europe, Austria should not appropriate Albania as her part of 
the booty and .thus get possession of the eastern shore of the 
Adriatic and make of that sea an Austrian lake. 

These mutual jealousies, rival ambitions, and conflicting inter- 
ests of the great powers created the Balkan problem in so far as 
it was an international question concerning Europe at large. 

703. The Young Turks; the Turkish Revolution (iqos). 
The situation in the Balkans being such as is portrayed in the 
preceding section, a remarkable movement in the Turkish Em- 
pire became the prelude to events of world import. In 1908 a 
revolution inaugurated by a party calling themselves Young Turks 
broke out in European Turkey. The leaders of this movement 
were men many of whom had been educated in western Europe 
and had there become imbued with the spirit of modern liberalism. 
Gaining control of the Balkan army, they demanded and secured 
from the Sultan Abdul Hamid a constitution^ which created a 
parliament and gave to all the subjects of the Sultan equal civic 
rights and complete religious liberty. The news of the granting 
of a constitution was received by the subjects of the Sultan 
first with utter incredulity, and then, when the news was con- 
firmed, with unparalleled demonstrations of joy. The world looked 
on with amazed and sympathetic interest. To the first Turkish 
parliament which convened under the constitution the American 
Congress sent good wishes and congratulations, while the leading 
members of the British House of Commons sent an address headed, 
"From the Oldest of Parliaments to the Youngest." 

1 This was a revival of a constitution that had been granted in 1S76 and later revoked. 



§ 704] THE BOSNIAN CRISIS 629 

For a few years the Young Turks administered affairs with 
such a measure of success as to awaken high hopes everywhere 
that the regeneration of Turkey was now really to be effected and 
the eternal Eastern Question thus given a final solution. But un- 
fortunately there was a lack of capable leaders in the party of 
reform. The promise of equal rights to all was not kept. The 
Young Turks could not give up their position as the dominant and 
privileged race of the empire. They set about the forcible " Turki- 
fication" of all the non-Turkish peoples — the Greeks, the Arme- 
nians, the Albanians, the Bulgarians, and the Arabs — of the 
Ottoman dominions. Meanwhile the treacherous Abdul Hamid 
broke faith with the revolutionists and worked secretly to get rid 
of the constitution and to regain his despotic power.'^ 

704, The Bosnian Crisis (1908). But an even more serious 
obstacle in the way of the success of the reform movement than 
these internal weaknesses and dissensions was the sordid greed of 
s.everal of the great powers, who saw in a regenerated Turkey the 
ruin of all their hopes of ultimately inheriting coveted portions of 
the ''sick man's" estate. His recovery was the very last thing 
they desired. Austria, fearing that if the Young Turks suc- 
ceeded in establishing a reformed and strong government she 
would lose control of Bosnia and Herzegovina, of which Turkish 
provinces she had been made administrator by the Treaty of 
Berlin, annexed the provinces to the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy 
(1908). This was a gross violation of the terms of the Berlin 
treaty and the direct beginning of the great tragedy of 19 14. 

Serbia, who had hoped that the provinces, their population 
being largely Serbian in race and language, would fall to her on 
the passing of the " sick man," felt grievously injured by Austria's 
act, and made vigorous protest, but unavailingly ; for when Rus- 
sia and Great Britain also protested, Emperor William took his 
stand, in " shining armor," - by the side of Austria and upheld her 

1 Abdul Hamid, after having instituted atrocious massacres of the Christians at 
Adana and other places in Asian Turkey, was deposed, and his brother was placed on 
the throne (igog). 

2 A phrase used by the kaiser in a later speech. 



630 THE WORLD WAR [§ 705 

in her wrongful procedure. Neither Russia nor any other of the 
great powers being ready to risk precipitating a general European 
war through intervention by force of arms, the provinces remained 
in Austria's hands. 

Another great crisis had been passed, but not without Europe's 
being drawn nearer to the abyss. By a gesture of the " mailed 
fist" Emperor William had settled to his own and his ally's ad- 
vantage a matter of European concern. But there was danger 
in settling matters of that kind in such a manner. 

705. The Second Moroccan Crisis (i9ii). We have seen how 
at the time of the first Moroccan crisis France was commissioned 
by the powers to preserve order in the country. Unfortunately 
the native government was inefficient and corrupt, hence the 
inevitable happened. The country fell into anarchy. A French 
army was soon at the capital Fez, and one of the rival contest- 
ants for the crown placed himself under French protection. This 
meant, of course, that Morocco's existence as an independent 
state was ended.^ 

At once a German warship, the Panther, appeared at one of the 
country's ports," and the German Emperor asked France what 
compensation she would allow Germany in return for a free hand 
in Morocco. After long and heated "conversations"- — Great 
Britain with her navy ready for action supporting France, since she 
could not permit Germany to secure a foothold on the shore oppo- 
site Gibraltar — the Emperor consented to the establishment of a 
protectorate over Morocco by France in return for the cession to 
Germany of portions of the French possessions in equatorial Africa. 

Thus by threat of war Germany had enlarged her African pos- 
sessions, but her relations with France had been greatly embittered, 
for the French denounced her action as blackmail, holding that 
German interests in Morocco were not of a nature to justify the 
intervention of Germany in the matter. 

Furthermore, the relations of Germany and Great Britain had 
been rendered still more tense, for many Germans were dissat- 
isfied with the settlement and felt that had it not been for the 

1 The country became a French protectorate in 1912. 2 Agadir, 191 1. 



§ 706] THE BALKAN WARS 631 

support which the British government gave France, Germany 
might have secured larger concessions from her^ — perhaps have 
got a part of Morocco itself. 

706. The Balkan Wars (1912-1913). The example set by 
Austria in 1908 in the seizure of the Turkish provinces of Bosnia 
and Herzegovina was shortly followed by Italy .^ A regenerated 
Turkey threatened to make an end of the long-cherished hope of 
the Italians that Tripoli and Cyrenaica in North Africa would fall 
to them as ripened fruit on the dissolution of the Ottoman Em- 
pire. So the Italian government resolved to seize at once the 
coveted prize, justifying this action on the ground that the Young 
Turks were treating unfairly Italian settlers and traders in the 
country. x\n expedition was launched, and the provinces were 
seized and annexed to Italy (1911). 

The Austrian and Italian attacks upon the integrity of the 
Ottoman Empire naturally excited the small Balkan states and 
helped to bring them to an epoch-making decision. Bulgaria, 
Serbia, Montenegro, and Greece formed an alliance (the Balkan 
League), the aim of which was to make an end of the Turkish 
power in Europe. The adventure turned out beyond all expecta- 
tion. To the amazement of the world the armies of the little 
states in a few weeks drove the Turks from almost all their 
possessions on the European continent — thus accomplishing what 
the great powers, because of their mutual jealousies, had been 
unable in centuries of war and diplomacy to effect. 

The marvelous success of the allies put into their hands much 
greater spoils in the way of territory than they had expected, and 
all probably would have gone well in the distribution of these had 
it not been for the intervention of the great powers, the interests 
of more than one of which were menaced by the proposed settle- 
ment. Austria, supported by Italy, demanded that no part of 
Albania should be allowed to go to Serbia, but that this territory 

1 Other states had earlier followed her example. Two days after Austria had an- 
nounced her decision to annex Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria proclaimed her com- 
plete independence from the suzerainty of the Ottoman Porte. Straightway the island 
of Crete, still under nominal Turkish suzerainty, declared for union with Greece (1908). 
Crete's union with Greece was sanctioned by the Treaty of London, 191 3. 



632 THE WORLt) WAR [§ 707 

should be made into an independent state. This was to keep 
Serbia from the Adriatic. Thus pushed back from her coveted 
outlet on these waters, Serbia turned towards the ^gean. She 
asked Bulgaria to consent to a revision of the original agreement 
regarding the division of the lands wrested from the Turks, and 
permit her to retain possession of a part of Macedonia. Bulgaria 
refused and insisted upon a division of the conquered lands in 
accordance with the terms of the original agreement. The Tsar 
of Russia in vain begged the disputants to submit the matter to 
him as arbiter. Instead of doing this Bulgaria suddenly attacked 
Serbia, being incited to this act by Austria, and thus precipitated 
the Second Balkan War. In this lamentable struggle Serbia, 
Montenegro, Greece, and Rumania were united against Bulgaria. 
The Turks seized the opportunity to retake a portion of the ter- 
ritory wrested from them in the first war. Beset on every side, 
Bulgaria was soon forced to give over the struggle. By the Treaty 
of Bucharest (191 3) there was made a new map of the Balkans. 
All that we need note here is the territorial aggrandizement of 
Slavic Serbia. This meant, of course, the enhancement of Rus- 
sian inlluence in the Balkans, since racial sentiment and sym- 
pathies would naturally cause Serbia to draw towards the great 
mother Slav state. 

On the other hand, a Greater Serbia was a menace to Austria, 
for a powerful Serbia would not only block her way to the ^gean 
but would naturally draw away or make more restless Austria's 
subjects of Serbian race, thereby tending to bring about the dis- 
integration of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. 

Furthermore, an enlarged and powerful Serbia under Russian 
influence and protection was something that the German Emperor 
could not brook, since it lay across the Berlin-Bagdad Railway 
and was a menace to that project and thus to the whole Pan- 
German scheme for the commercial and political domination of 
western Asia. 

707. Assassination of the Crown Prince of Austria; "the 
Fateful Twelve Days." It was inevitable that, in the circum- 
stances which we have described, Austro-Serbian relations should 



§ 707] "THE FATEFUL TWELVE DAYS" 633 

become strained to a dangerous tension. Events moved rapidly. 
While visiting the recently annexed province of Bosnia, the Aus- 
trian crown prince — the Archduke Francis Ferdinand — and his 
wife were assassinated.^ Austria, charging that Serbian officials 
were accomplices of the assassins, addressed to Serbia an ulti- 
matum,- some of the demands of which were incompatible with 
the rights of Serbia as a sovereign and independent state. An 
answer was demanded in forty-eight hours. Serbia returned a con- 
ciliatory reply, acceding to most of the demands and offering 
to submit either to the International Tribunal at The Hague or 
to the judgment of certain of the great powers the points to which 
she could not give unqualified assent. The reply was pronounced 
unacceptable, and Austria, supported in her course by Germany, 
declared war against Serbia.^ 

The action of Austria created alarm in every European capital. 
Strenuous efforts were made by Great Britain, France, and Russia 
to stay Austria's hand and to have the whole question brought 
before a conference of the great powers not directly interested or 
carried to the Hague Tribunal, for nothing was more certain than 
that an attack by Austria upon Serbia would precipitate a gen- 
eral European war, because Russia would not and could not stand 
aloof and see the little Serbian nation crushed, since this would 
mean German supremacy in the Balkans. But Germany, re- 
jecting all proposals, insisted that the matter concerned Austria 
and Serbia alone and that there should be no intervention by any 
of the other powers. 

Austria having actually attacked Serbia, Russia began to mobi- 
lize her armies against the Dual INIonarchy. Germany thereupon 
sent an ultimatum to Russia demanding that she demobilize within 
twelve hours. Russia giving no response, Germany declared war 
against her.* 

At the same time Germany asked the French Premier, Viviani, 
whether in the event of a Russo-German war France would remain 
neutral. His reply was that " France would take such action as 
her interests might require." Almost immediately the German 

1 At Sarajevo, June 28, 1914. ^ July 23, 1914. ^ July 28, 1914. "• August 1, 1914. 



634 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 707 



troops crossed the French frontier/ On August 2 Germany pre- 
sented an ultimatum to Belgium, declaring it to be her purpose 
to march across Belgian territory to attack France and promising, 
if the passage of the German troops was not opposed, to guarantee, 
upon the conclusion of peace, the independence and integrity of 
the Belgian kingdom, but at the same time warning the Belgian 

government that if the ad- 
vance of the German forces 
was impeded in any way, the 
German government would 
deal with Belgium as an 
enemy. King Albert, sup- 
ported in his heroic decision 
by his ministers, first remind- 
ing Germany that she herself 
had solemnly promised to re- 
spect Belgian neutrality, re- 
fused to consent to the passage 
of the German army, saying 
that the Belgian government 
" by accepting the proposal 
would sacrifice the honor of 
the Belgian nation while at the 
same time betraying its duties 
towards Europe." The Ger- 
man troops at once swept into 
Belgium. 
The violation of Belgium brought Great Britain into the war." 
On August 4 the British ambassador at Berlin received instruc- 
tions to inform the Imperial German Government that if assur- 
ance was not given by twelve o'clock that night that the German 

1 Germany declared war on France August 3, 1914. 

2 Though the invasion of Belgium by the Germans actually brought Great Britain 
into the war, it is certain that she would, as the ally of France, have taken part in it even 
if the neutrality of Belgium had not been violated. She could not have stood aside 
while Germany was striking down France, robbing her of her colonies, and making of 
her a vassal state. 




Harris & Hwing 



Fig. 109. Albert, King of the 
Belgians. (From a photograph) 



§ 708] THE VIOLATION OF BELGIUM 635 

advance into Belgium would be stopped, the British government 
would " take all steps in their power to uphold the neutrality of 
Belgium and the observance of a treaty to which Germany was 
as much a party as themselves." The German Chancellor, 
Bethmann-Hollweg, greatly agitated, expressed pain and surprise 
that the British government should take such a resolve "just for 
a word, 'neutrality' — just for a scrap of paper." 

The Imperial German Government's reply to the British ulti- 
matum being that it was absolutely necessary that the German 
armies should advance into France "by the quickest and easiest 
way, so as to be able to get well ahead with their operations and 
endeavor to strike some decisive blow as early as possible," Great 
Britain at once drew the sword. 

Thus by the close of August 4, only twelve days after Austria's 
ultimatum to Serbia had become known to the English, French, 
and Russian governments, five of the great powers were at war. 
The curtain had lifted on " the most tragic drama of human 
history." 

IL OUTSTANDING EVENTS OF THE WAR 

708. The Violation of Belgium. The German plan of cam- 
paign was simple. With a swift blow France was to be struck 
down before her allies could come to her aid ; then Russia, whom 
Austria was to hold in check while the German armies were over- 
running France, was to be put out of the war. But the French 
frontier toward Germany, running from Switzerland to Luxem- 
burg, was strongly fortified, and the reduction of these defenses 
would delay for at least several weeks the advance into France of 
the German troops ; hence the proposal made by Germany to the 
Belgian government for an unobstructed passage of the German 
armies through Belgium. We have seen how, upon the indig- , 
nant rejection of this dishonorable proposal, the German troops 
were flung across the frontier in utter disregard of treaty obliga- 
tions and of international law. The crime was confessed in self- 
inditing words by the German Chancellor, Bethmann-Hollweg. 
In announcing to the Reichstag the invasion of Belgium, he said : 



636 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 708 



" Gentlemen, we are now in a state of necessity, and necessity 
knows no law. Our troops have occupied Luxemburg and per- 
haps are already on Belgian soil. Gentlemen, that is contrary 
to the dictates of international law. . . . The wrong — I speak 
openly — that we are committing we will endeavor to make good 
as soon as our military goal has been reached."^ 

The first obstacle to the 
advance of the German forces 
was the strongly fortified city 
of Liege. In a few days the 
defenses of the place, which 
had been thought impregnable, 
were pounded into dust by the 
monstrous siege guns of the 
enemy. 

The resistance of the Bel- 
gians roused a fury of rage in 
the Germans, who now began a 
campaign of " frightfulness " 
{SchreckUchkcit) , the purpose 
of which was to terrorize the 
people and make them submis- 
sive to the German will. Vil- 
lages and cities, individual 
citizens of which it was alleged 
had fired upon the German soldiers, were sacked and burned, and 
hundreds of non-combatants --men, women, and children — were 
indiscriminately slain. Hostages were shot for the alleged acts of 
persons over whom they had no control. Priests were killed. The 
famous university and library of Louvain were wantonly destroyed 
and a large part of the city itself laid in ashes. The world stood 
aghast at these crimes, for it had been believed that the time was 
past when the armies of any civilized government would commit 
such atrocities, to which there is no parallel in history since the 
Thirty Years' War. 

1 This speech was made August 4, 1914. 




Harrii, &: Hwing 

Fk;. 1 10. Cardinal Mercier of 
Belgium. (From a photograph) 



§ 709] 



"THE MIRACLE OF THE MARNE" 



637 



The brave resistance of the Belgians to the passage of the 
German armies had momentous consequences. The delay, short 
though it was, that it caused the Germans not only gave the 
French time to concentrate their forces and throw them to the 
north between the invaders and Paris but it also gave England 
time to come to the aid of her ally with a small but efficient 
force. It thus made pos- ; - 

sible the great victory of . " 
the Marne. 

709. "The Miracle of 
the Marne" (September 
5-9, 1914). Along the 
Franco-Belgian frontier the 
German invaders were met 
by the French and British 
armies. Their stubborn re- 
sistance to the German ad- 
vance, however, was broken, 
and the victorious Germans 
pushed on towards Paris. 
The French government 
fled to Bordeaux. It seemed 
as though the story of 1870 
was to be repeated. But 
with the enemy almost 
within sight of the capital, 
the French general, Joffre, 
halted the retreat of his 
forces along the southern banks of the river Marne, and there, 
near the region where, more than fourteen hundred years before, 
the savage hordes of Attila were turned back by the Franks 
and their confederates,^ inflicted a memorable and disastrous 
defeat upon the invaders. The Germans retreated to the 
river Aisne, nearly halfway to the Belgian frontier, and there 
intrenched themselves. 




Used Ijy perniisbion of the Proprietors of Lontlun Pu7uh 

Fig. III. The Kaiser. So you see — 
you've lost everything. 
Albert, King of the Belgians. 
Not my soul. 



1 See Ancient Hisfory, 2d Rev. Ed., sect. 544. 



638 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§710 



The battle of the Marne is rightly given a place — perhaps 
it should be the first place — among the decisive battles of 
the world. It saved not only France but all continental Europe 
from German domination, for nothing is more certain than 
that if France had lost at the Marne, Russia would have been 
quickly overrun by the German armies and German military 
and political control of the Continent firmly established. 

710. The Struggle for the 
Channel Ports, The Germans 
had failed in their plans to 
reach Paris and put France out 
of the war. They now made 
a supreme effort to reach the sea 
and get control of the Channel 
ports on the shore opposite Eng- 
land. With these ports in the 
hands of the enemy the safety 
of England would, of course, 
have been imperiled. Strenuous 
efforts were made to prevent such 
a calamity. British, French, and 
Belgian forces were quickly 
thrown between the Germans 
and the coveted prize. These 
land forces were aided by the 
British fleet, which patrolled 
the coast. In the Flanders region the sluices were opened and 
wide tracts of the land flooded — an old device for defense in these 
low-lying lands. The struggle was long and bitter. Some of 
the bloodiest battles of the war were fought here.^ The British 
army, " a contemptible little army," as it was characterized by the 
German Kaiser, after deeds of valor which made of the epithet of 
scorn a badge of immortal honor,- was virtually annihilated. 
Though the Germans reached the sea at Ostend and gained 




Fig. 1 12. GexkralJoffre. (From 

a painting by J. F. Bouchor, Official 

Painter to the French Armies) 



1 The most important were the battle of the Vser and the first battle of Ypres. 

2 The survivors of this expeditionary army proudly accept the title of " The 
Contemptibies."' 



§ 711] THE WESTERN BATTLE FRONT 639 

control of a strip of the Belgian coast, they were thwarted in reach- 
ing their main objective — the ports of Calais and Boulogne, at 
the narrowest part of the Channel. 

711. The Western Battle Front. After the battle of the Marne 
and at the end of the struggle for the Channel ports, the Germans, 
still standing in the main on French and Belgian soil, intrenched 
themselves along a line about four hundred and seventy miles in 
length, running from Switzerland to the North Sea. Facing the 
German trenches were drawn the trenches of the Allies. Never 
before in history was there such a far-flung battle line. Between 
the opposing lines of ditches, dugouts, and wire entanglements ran 
a strip of ground varying in width from a few hundred yards in 
some places to several miles in others, known as " No Man's 
Land" — a name which suggests much of the tragedy of the 
great war. 

For about a year and a half the French, aided by a small num- 
ber of British and Belgian troops, held back the German masses 
along this extended line, while a new British army, numbering sev- 
eral millions, was being raised, trained, and equipped ; and then 
for another like period the Anglo-French-Belgian forces manned 
the trenches until the United States, which early in 191 7 had 
entered the war, was mustering, drilling, and transporting to 
France a great army of over two million men. 

During these three years the fighting along this Western Front 
was in the nature of siege operations. Hundreds of cannon, large 
and small, were constantly pouring showers of shell into the 
trenches of the enemy, until in many places "No Man's Land" 
was so plowed up and so pitted with shell holes that a photograph 
of it from an airplane resembled a photograph of the crater-pitted 
face of the moon. Many offensives, or drives, were launched by 
both the Germans and the Allies in efforts to push back or break 
through the opposing line, but at the end of the three years the 
lines, though in some places they had been bent and pushed 
towards Germany, in general ran substantially as at the beginning 
of the period. 

The story of this trench warfare on the Western Front belongs 
to the military records of the war and cannot be dwelt upon here. 



640 THE WORLD WAR [§ 712 

We shall merely, a little later, preserving the chronological order 
of our narrative, speak briefly of one of the offensives undertaken 
by the Germans and mention another launched by the British, 
which were such supreme efforts as to make them of epochal 
importance.^ 

712. The Eastern Front ; Russian Victories and Reverses 
(1914-1915). We must now turn our attention to the Eastern 
Front. Just at the moment when the Germans were threatening 
Paris, the Russians came to the aid of their French ally by sending 
two armies into East Prussia and menacing Berlin. One of the 
invading armies was met and almost annihilated by the German 
general, Hindenburg.'- The other army then drew back to the 
frontier. 

This defeat of the Russians in East Prussia was offset by their 
victories over Austria in Galicia.^ Three great Austrian armies 
were routed and three hundred thousand prisoners taken. The 
military power of Austria seemed on the point of absolute col- 
lapse. But with the coming of Germany to the rescue of her ally, 
the tide was quickly turned. A great victory for the Central 
Powers* saved Austria and crippled seriously the military power 
of Russia. A wide strip of western Russia, including Poland, fell 
into the hands of the Germans. As earlier in the west so now 
here in the east there resulted finally a deadlock, and the contend- 
ing armies settled down to trench warfare. 

Thus Germany at the end of campaigns covering about a year 
and a half had failed as to her main purpose both in the west 
and in the east.'^ Neither France nor Russia, though each had 
received a terrible blow and lost much territory, had been put 
out of the war. 

1 See sect. 716 and p. 644, n. 2. 

2 At the battle of Tannenberg, August 3, 1914. Early the next year in the battle of 
the Mazurian Lakes, East Prussia, General Hindenburg inflicted upon the Russians a 
second decisive defeat with immense losses in killed and prisoners. 

3 Lemberg was taken by the Russians about September 1, 1914; Przemysl fell into 
their hands in early March, 191 5, with 125,000 prisoners. 

^ The battle of the Dunajec, early May, 1915 ; as decisive a victor}' for Germany as the 
battle of the Mame was for France. 

5 She was more successful in the southeast (see sect. 715). 



§ 713] THE SINKING OF THE LUSITANIA 641 

713. The Sinking of the Lusitania (May 7, 1915). On 
February 4, 191 5, the German government announced that every 
merchant vessel of the AlHes entering a designated zone around, 
the British Isles would be destroyed, "without its being always 
possible to avert the dangers threatening the crews and passengers." 
This meant that such vessels would be sunk without warning. 

Now, to do the thing the German government announced it was 
going to do would be not only to violate the principles of humanity 
but to disregard the law of nations, which forbids the destruction 
of passenger or merchant ships under any circumstances before 
the crews and passengers have been put in a place of safety. 

Notwithstanding a solemn warning from President Wilson that 
the United States government would hold the German government 
to a " strict accountability " if such action as it purposed to take 
should result in the death of any American citizens, the German 
submarines straightway proceeded to sink merchant vessels with- 
out warning, and in several instances destroyed the lives of Ameri- 
can citizens. Then on May i, 19 15, there appeared in American 
newspapers an advertisement issued by the German Embassy in 
Washington, in which all persons were warned against taking 
passage on the British steamship Lusitania, which was about to 
sail from New York for an English port, it being intimated that 
every effort would be made by German submarines to sink the 
liner. No attention was paid to the warning, as no one believed 
that any civilized government would do the thing that the Im- 
perial German Government threatened to do. 

On the evening of May 7, 1915, as the Lusitania, with crew 
and passengers numbering about two thousand, neared the Irish 
coast, she was torpedoed without warning, and more than a thou- 
sand persons, among them many women and little children, were 
drowned. 

This awful crime created horror and indignation throughout the 
civilized world. The United States demanded of the German 
government a disavowal of the act and assurance that the opera- 
tions of its submarines would in the future conform to the re- 
quirements of international law. But it was only after a long 



642 THE WORLD WAR [§ 714 

delay and the exchange of numerous notes that the German gov- 
ernment finally gave the following pledge : " Liners will not be 
sunk by our submarines without warning and without providing 
for the safety of the lives of non-combatants, provided that the 
liners do not try to escape or offer resistance."^ 

It was the withdrawal of this solemn pledge by the Imperial 
German Government that, as we shall learn, was the immediate 
cause of the United States entering the war early in 191 7 on 
the side of the Allies. 

714. Italy enters the War (May 23, 1915). Although a mem- 
ber of the Triple Alliance, Italy did not join Germany and Austria 
in the war, because she was convinced that the war against Serbia 
was an act of aggression on the part of Austria, and since the 
alliance of which she was a member was merely a defensive, and 
not an offensive, alliance, she was not bound to come to the aid 
of her allies. 

In truth Italy's alliance with Austria was an altogether un- 
natural one, for Austria was the hereditary enemy of the Italian 
people." Instead of fighting for the extension of Austrian rule 
and the enhancement of Austria's influence and power in the 
Balkans, the Italians were rather minded to take advantage of 
her embarrassment and fight for the liberation of the still un- 
redeemed Italian lands ^ {Italia irredenta). Negotiations were 
begun by the Italian government with Austria for her withdrawal 
from these districts. But no agreement could be reached, and Italy 
entered the war on the side of the Allies. A new battle front 
was thus created. For the next two years and more this front 
was the scene of much hard mountain fighting, in which the Italian 
armies wrested from Austrian control much of the coveted lands.^ 
Then came a great disaster, of which we shall speak later, and the 
loss to the enemy of all that had been gained, and much besides. 

715. The War in the Southeast in 1915 ; Serbia and Turkey. 
We have noted how the close of the year 19 15 saw Germany's 
main war aims both in the west and in the east unattained 

1 This pledge was given September i, 1015. 

2 See Chapter XXXVIII. 3 The Trentino and Trieste. 

4 Embracing the important city of Gorizia, which was taken August S, 1916. 



§ 7l5j THE WAR IN THE SOUTHEAST 643 

(sect. 712). In the southeast, however, by the end of the year 
Germany had completely realized her plans. What she wanted 
here was to secure Austro-German supremacy in the Balkans and 
to keep unobstructed her railway route to the Persian Gulf. All 
this she achieved in a terrible drive against Serbia and through 
aiding Turkey in the defense of the Dardanelles. 

The Serbian situation at the beginning of this offensive was 
as follows : At the opening of the war in 19 14 Austria had in- 
vaded Serbia and taken the capital, Belgrade. After severe fighting 
the Serbians had retaken their capital and driven the Austrians 
from Serbian soil. Germany then came to the aid of her ally, and 
a strong Austro-German army in cooperation with a large Bul- 
garian force — Bulgaria having joined the Central Powers — 
quickly overcame all Serbian resistance.^ The Serbian army, in 
one of the most distressful retreats in history, fled southward over 
the x'Mbanian mountains, amidst the snows of a bitter winter, and 
the remnant who escaped capture or death from exposure found a 
refuge in the island of Corfu. Serbia was made a second Bel- 
gium. Montenegro, which fought with Serbia, was involved in 
Serbia's ruin. 

There were still other misfortunes to deepen the gloom that 
darkened for the Allies the close of the year 191 5. An attempt 
made early in the year by an Anglo-French fleet to reach Constan- 
tinople by forcing the Dardanelles^ had ended in disaster. This 
failure of the fleet was followed by an equally ill-fated land 
attack,^ in which Australian and New Zealand troops won special 
distinction. After having suffered great privation and tragic 
losses, the allied forces were withdrawn."* 

Thus "for the moment Germany had realized the German 
dream of expansion to the Near East, the conception of a Central 
Empire, a Mittel-Europa, fronting the Baltic and the Adriatic, 

1 An Anglo-French army which had been gathered at the Greek port of Saloniki was 
outmatched and, hampered by the fear of Greek treachery in its rear, was unable to 
render the Serbians any effective aid. 

2 Turkey had entered the war in November, 19 14, on the side of the Central Powers. 
Her action was motived, in part, by fear of her hereditary enemy, Russia, in the event 
of the triumph of the Allies. 

3 On the peninsula of Gallipoli. ■* In January, 1916. 



644 THE WORLD WAR [§ 716 

overflowing the Sea of Marmora into Asia Minor, and bound by 
the German-built railway uniting Berlin, Vienna, and Constanti- 
nople with Bagdad, and Hamburg and Antwerp with Suez and the 
Persian Gulf. Here at last was a solid gain, a real victory, after 
two great disappointments" (Simonds). 

716. Verdun — "They shall not pass." The event of greatest 
military importance in 191 6, the third year of the war, was the 
German offensive — really a trench battle that lasted nearly a year 
— against Verdun, on the west front/ Russia having been de- 
feated and the German situation in the Balkans made secure, 
Germany now turned to strike another blow at France in the hope 
oit breaking either the French line or the French spirit and thus 
putting France out of the war before Great Britain's new army 
was drilled, equipped, and in the field. 

The blow was aimed at Verdun, an ancient French fortress. 
The attack began early in the year. The stout watchword of the 
French was, " They shall not pass." The Germans, after the first 
rush, made for several months only slow foot-by-foot advances ; 
and then the French, taking the offensive, quickly drove them 
from practically all the ground which they had occupied. The 
losses of the Germans in killed, wounded, and prisoners are esti- 
mated to have exceeded a quarter of a million. This French 
victory was second only to that of the Marne.- 



1 The matter of supreme naval importance was the battle of Jutland, in the North Sea 
(May 31), a fight between the British and German battle fleets, " the greatest conflict in 
naval history" (Simonds). The issue confirmed England's mastery of the sea. 

2 At the same time that the Germans launched their great offensive at Verdun the 
Austrians made a menacing attack through the Trentino. To relieve the pressure on their 
allies, Russia and Great Britain started offensives. Russia, having recovered more quickly 
than was thought possible from her defeat in 191 5, attacked Austria and took 400,000 
prisoners. This forced the Austrians hastily to withdraw their troops from Italy for the 
defense of their eastern frontier. In Asia Minor the Grand Duke Nicholas set on foot a 
campaign against the Turks, overran Armenia, and captured the important cities of 
Erzerum and Trebizond. 

The British, or rather Franco-British, drive is known as the first battle of the Somme. 
This was one of the great battles of the war — a trench battle, which lasted from July i to 
November 30, 1916. The enemy's lines were so shaken that the Germans were forced to 
retreat to what is known as the Hindenburg Line. This movement, however, was not made 
until the spring of 191 7. The territory given up was wantonly and ruthlessly devastated 
by the retreating Germans. 



§ 717] RUMANIA ENTERS THE WAR 645 

717. Rumania enters the War and is ruined. Midsummer of 
the year 19 16 saw the fortunes of the Central Powers at their 
lowest ebb. The German attempt to break the French front at 
Verdun had failed ; the British and French had gained the victory 
of the Somme ; Italy had repelled the Austrian invasion of the 
Trentino and had made important gains in the region between the 
Julian x-Mps and the sea. It seemed as though the ultimate defeat 
of the two empires was certain. At this important juncture Ru- 
mania entered the war/ making the seventh nation arrayed against 
the Central Powers. Her aim in throwing herself into the struggle 
was to realize national unity for the Rumanian race by the lib- 
eration from the Austro-Hungarian yoke of the several million 
Rumanians of Transylvania and other territories. 

Rumania's action simply added another to the many tragedies 
of the great war. Betrayed by pro-German sympathizers among 
Russian officials, which left her without such support as she should 
have received from Russia, the little state was quickly crushed by 
the German armies and a great part of its territory occupied.- 

The tragic collapse of Rumania gave an entirely different aspect 
to the German situation and prospects. Germany's mastery of 
the continent seemed now assured (see map, p. 646). 

718. A German Peace Offer ; President Wilson's Address to 
the Senate (January 22, 1917). The overshadowing events of the 
year 191 7 were the Russian Revolution, with its aftermath of the 
collapse of Russia, and the entrance into the war of the United 
States of America. But before proceeding to speak of these 
matters we must note certain discussions respecting terms of 
peace and the war aims of the belligerents which marked the 
close of the year 19 16 and the opening of the year upon which" 
we here enter. 

These peace discussions were opened by the Central Powers. 
Adopting the tone of victors, they proposed a meeting for peace 
negotiations of all the nations at war. The Allies refused to enter 
into such a conference until Germany and Austria had stated the 
conditions upon which they were ready to conclude peace. 

1 August 27, 1916. 2 The campaign was not completed until 191 7. 



646 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 717 



About the same time President Wilson, acting independently of 
the overtures of the Central Powers, asked all the nations at war 
to state definitely "their respective views as to the terms upon 
which the war might be concluded, and the arrangements which 
would be deemed satisfactory as a guarantee against its renewal 
or the kindling of any similar conflict in the future." 



- Petrograd 



- -OhTH . -. y ^. l^y if ^ I 

IK N>nKK 

3 s't'T J ' '•"'! ^,. Berlin^ >' 

'^ \ . R/ U S S I A 





MiTTEL-EUROPA AND TURKISH AxXEX 

Territories occupied or virtually controlled by Germany at the beginning of 1917- The 
Pan-German project of a Mittel-Europa (sect. 69S) is here actually realized 



To this appeal the Central Powers made only a very brief reply, 
which contained no statement as to the terms on which they would 
be willing to conclude peace. The allied governments, however, 
replying at greater length, stated concretely the objects they 
sought in the war, declaring these to be " the restoration of Bel- 
gium, of Serbia, of Montenegro, and the indemnities which are 
due them ; the evacuation of the invaded territories of France, of 
Russia, and of Rumania, with just reparation ; . . . the restitu- 
tion of provinces or territories wrested in the past from the Allies 
by force or against the will of their populations, the liberation of 



§ 717] A GERMAN PEACE OFFER 647 

Italians, of Slavs, of Rumanians, of Czechs, and of Slovaks from 
foreign domination ; the enfranchisement of populations subject 
to the bloody tyranny of the Turks ; . . . and the liberation of 
Europe from the brutal covetousness of Prussian militarism." 

Then on January 22, 19 17, President Wilson, in an historic 
address to the Senate, set forth the principles that must form the 
basis of any peace which would have any prospect of permanency, 
and which the United States would be ready to join other nations 
in guaranteeing. Among the principles and the conditions of peace 
were these : ( i ) " The principle that governments derive all their 
just powers from the consent of the governed, and that no right 
anywhere exists to hand peoples about from sovereignty to sov- 
ereignty as if they were property." (2) "That no nation should 
seek to extend its policy over any other nation or people, but 
that every people should be left free to determine its own policy, 
its own way of development, unhindered, unthreatened, unafraid, 
the little along with the great and powerful." (3) Limitation of 
war navies, of armies, and of all naval and military preparations 
for war ; and a league of the civilized nations of the world to 
guarantee peace and the rights of all nations.^ 

This setting forth by the Allies and President Wilson of what 
should be the terms and principles of a just and permanent peace 
was at the same time a disclosure of the real issues involved in the 
great war, and thus a revelation of the deeper causes of the un- 
paralleled conflict ; for in the terms of settlement of a war, if 
the settlement be a just, adequate, and final settlement, are dis- 
closed the real causes of the struggle that it brings to a conclusion. 

Dwelling upon the suggestion of a league of nations for main- 
taining the peace of the world, President Wilson said impressiyely : 
"It is inconceivable that the people of the United States should 
play no part in that great enterprise. They cannot, in honor, with- 
hold the service to which they are now about to be challenged. . . . 
That service is nothing less than this — to add their authority and 
their power to the authority and force of other nations to guarantee 
peace and justice throughout the world." 

1 This passage is slightly condensed. 



648 THE WORLD WAR [§ 719 

President Wilson at this time apparently believed that the people 
of the United States would be called upon only to take part, after 
the war, in the formation of a union or federation of the nations to 
maintain the future peace of the world and to preserve the liberties 
of all nations, great and small. But it was a vastly greater and 
more self-sacrificing service to which they were soon to be 
challenged. 

719. The German Government announces its Purpose to 
resume Unrestricted Submarine Operations (January 31, 1917). 
We have noted the submarine controversy between the United 
States and Germany (sect. 713). The pledge given the United 
States by the German government not to torpedo liners without 
first caring for the safety of crew and passengers was only par- 
tially kept for about a year and a half. Then Germany gave notice 
to the United States government that it would immediately do 
away with the restrictions which up to that time it had impressed 
upon its use of its submarines. This meant that all ships, those of 
neutrals as well as those of the enemy, entering designated areas in 
the Mediterranean or a zone drawn around the British Isles, would 
be sunk on sight and without regard to the safety of the persons 
they carried.^ 

The answer of the United States government to this amazing 
announcement was to hand the German ambassador, Bernstorff, 
his passports.- This meant the severance of all diplomatic rela- 
tions with the Imperial German Government. In an address of 
great dignity and earnestness President Wilson informed the Con- 
gress of the step he had taken. The address was in effect a warn- 
ing to the Imperial German Government not to do the thing it 
had threatened to do. 1 

720. Germany seeks Alliance with Mexico against the 
United States. The feeling of intense indignation aroused in the 
people of the United States against the Imperial German Govern- 
ment by its criminal submarine policy was just at this time greatly 

1 Permission was given to the United States to send one passenger liner a week to 
Great Britain, provided that it was marked in a certain way with stripes, departed on a 
specified day, and made the port of Fahnouth in England its destination. 

" February 3, 1917. 



§ 721] THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION 649 

intensified by the publication of a letter of instructions from the 
German Minister of Foreign Affairs, Zimmermann, to the German 
minister in Mexico, dated January 19, 19 17, and running as fol- 
lows : " On the first of February we intend to begin submarine 
warfare unrestricted. In spite of this, it is our intention to en- 
deavor to keep neutral the United States of America. If this 
attempt is not successful, we propose an alliance on the following 
basis with Mexico : That we shall make war together and to- 
gether make peace. We shall give general financial support, and 
it is understood that Mexico is to reconquer the lost territory in 
New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. You are instructed to inform 
the President of Mexico of the above in the greatest confidence 
as soon as it is certain that there will be an outbreak of war with 
the United States, and suggest that the President of Mexico, on 
his own initiative, communicate with Japan suggesting adhesion 
at once to this plan. . . . Please call to the attention of the 
President of Mexico that the employment of ruthless submarine 
warfare now promises to compel England to make peace in a few 
months." 

The publication of this astounding letter, taken in connection 
with the German announcement of the resumption of unrestricted 
submarine warfare, made inevitable the entrance of the United 
States into the war on the side of the Allies. 

721. The Russian Revolution (March 15, 1917). While the 
United States, on the verge of war, was awaiting events, the at- 
tention of the world was arrested by one of the most remarkable 
revolutions in history. On March 15, 1917, Tsar Nicholas II, 
the reigning representative of the House of Romanoff, which had 
ruled despotically in Russia for over three hundred years, was 
forced to abdicate, and a provisional government was set up.^ 
Amnesty was granted for all political and religious offenses. Tens 
of thousands of exiles in Siberia and in the prison fortresses of 

1 The immediate cause of the revolution, aside from the widespread suffering of the 
people and general war-weariness, was the incompetence shown by the government in 
the conduct of the war, and the popular belief, which was well founded, that the defeats 
which the Russian armies had suffered were the result of treachery on the part of Russian 
officials of pro-German sympathies. 



650 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 722 



Russia were set free. Liberty of speech and of the press was pro- 
claimed. Universal suffrage was decreed. A constituent assembly 
was to be called to draft a constitution. The news of the revolu- 
tion was received by liberals everywhere with unbounded en- 
thusiasm. The United 
States straightway rec- 
ognized the new gov- 
ernment and welcomed 
Russia as a member 
of the family of free 
nations. 

Unfortunately the 
draught of liberty was 
too strong. The Russian 
people, suddenly freed 
from autocratic tyranny, 
were intoxicated. They 
were in a state of be- 
wilderment. Hundreds of 
German agents crossed 
the frontier and incited 
sedition, disorder, and 
treason. The provisional 
government made heroic 
but unavailing efforts to 
hold back the country 
from anarchy. The army 
fell into a state of dis- 
order and confusion. Of 
this collapse of Russia 
and her practical elimination as a military factor from the war 
we shall speak later. 

722. The United States enters the War (April 6, 1917). On 
the second day of April, 191 7, President Wilson addressed both 
Houses of Congress, called in extraordinary session, on ttie results 
of the unrestricted operations of the German submarines resumed 




Fig. 113. 



The Last of the Romanoffs 
(From a photograph) 



After his abdication the ex-Tsar Nicholas II became 
a prisoner of the Russian revokitionary government. 
He was finally taken to Siberia, where he and his 
wife and children were murdered by the Bolshevists, 
who had seized supreme power. His seat here is 
the stump of a tree which he has just felled 



§ 722] THE UNITED STATES ENTERS THE WAR 651 

two months before. "The new policy," he said, "has swept every 
restriction aside — vessels of every kind, whatever their flag, their 
character, their cargo, their destination, their errand, have been 
ruthlessly sent to the bottom without warning and without thought 
of help or mercy for those on board. . . . Even hospital ships 
and ships carrying relief to the sorely bereaved and sorely stricken 
people of Belgium , . . have been sunk with the same reckless 
lack of compassion or of principle. . . . The present German sub- 
marine warfare against commerce is a warfare against mankind." 

The President then advised the Congress that it "declare the 
recent course of the Imperial German Government to be in fact 
nothing less than war against the government and people of the 
United States [and] that it formally accept the status of belliger- 
ent which has thus been thrust upon it." 

"We are glad," he continued, "now that we see the facts with 
no veil of false pretense about them, to fight thus for the ultimate 
p,eace of the world and for the liberation of its people, the German 
people included ; for the rights of nations, great and small, and the 
privilege of men everywhere to choose their way of life and of obe- 
dience. The world must be made safe for democracy." 

The Congress and the country were profoundly moved. Four 
days later, on the sixth of April, the House of Representatives by 
an overwhelming vote accepted a joint resolution, which had al- 
ready been passed by the Senate, and which declared that a state 
of war existed between the Imperial German Government and the 
government and the people of the United States. Thus was the 
momentous decision made, and the great American republic, 
without enthusiasm but with grave determination and with a good 
conscience, entered the World War. 

To the allied countries the action of the United States was a 
heartening affirmation of the righteousness of their cause and a 
sure guarantee of ultimate victory. On receipt of the news in 
England the Stars and Stripes were flung out alongside the Union 
Jack of Great Britain from the high tower of the Parliament 
Building at Westminster — "the first time," it is said, "that a 
foreign flag was ever displayed from that eminence." 



652 THE WORLD WAR [§ 723 

A few weeks later the first troops of an expeditionary force 
from the United States, under General Pershing, landed in France.^ 
They were received by the war-worn French people with frantic 
demonstrations of joy and gratitude. 

723. Other Events of the Year 1917. After the decision of 
the United States government, in early April, to accept the status 
of a belligerent forced upon it by the acts of the Imperial German 
Government, the remaining months of the year 191 7 were spent 
by it in preparations for actual participation in the war. The 
best part of its navy was sent to European waters. Ten million 
men between twenty-one and thirty-one years of age were regis- 
tered, from which by selective draft a great army in successive 
instalments of half a million or more was to be created, equipped, 
and drilled. Sixteen cantonments, each a veritable city capable 
of accommodating about forty thousand soldiers, were constructed 
and made ready for the new recruits by early autumn. To meet 
the cost of these preparations and the expense of building a great 
mercantile fleet of hundreds of vessels to replace those destroyed 
by the German submarines, and of constructing thousands of air- 
ships, as well as to provide for great loans to our allies. Congress 
voted sums of money reckoned by billions. These enormous 
amounts were raised by increased taxation and by the sale of 
bonds. 

In Europe the summer and fall months of the year witnessed 
military operations on all the battle fronts. In the west there was 
practically continuous trench warfare, with hard-fought and costly 
offensives by both the French and the British armies, but the 
enemy lines were not broken through, and the year ended without 
any military decision on this front having been reached. 

In the east the Russian collapse became complete by midsum- 
mer. The army simply fell to pieces. Liberty had been pro- 
claimed, and to the simple peasant soldiers that meant that every 
one was free I0 do as he liked. Thousands left the trenches and 
returned to their homes. The empire disintegrated like the army. 
Finland, the Ukraine, and other districts or nationalities severed 

1 June 26, 1917. 



§ 722,] OTHER EVENTS OF THE YEAR 1917 653 

all relations with Petrograd and set up as independent republics. 
The provisional government established at Petrograd was over- 
thrown, and the reins of power passed into the hands of radical 
communists (Bolsheviki), who instituted a regime similar in some 
respects to that of the extremists of the French Revolution. The 
leaders of this counter-revolution, Lenine and Trotzky, now opened 
peace negotiations with the Central Powers/ The principles they 
proclaimed were ''no annexations, no indemnities, and self- 
determination of peoples." The year ended with these negotia- 
tions still in progress. 

The Russian collapse had serious results for the Italians. It 
allowed the Central Powers to transfer considerable forces from 
the eastern to the Italian front. A great offensive against the 
Italians resulted in the breaking of the Italian lines, which neces- 
sitated a retreat to the Piave River and the abandonment of all 
the ground that the Italian armies had gained in two years of 
arduous mountain campaigning. A part of Venetia also was lost 
to the invaders. - 

In Asian Turkey the British forces made important advances 
during the year. In the early spring they captured the city of 
Bagdad, on the Tigris River,^ and thus gained control of lower 
Mesopotamia. Towards the end of the year they wrested from 
the Turks the city of Jerusalem. The Holy City was thus restored 
to the Christian world after having been in the hands of the 
Moslems since its capture by the Saracens in the year 637, ex- 
cepting the short period in the twelfth century when it was held 
by the crusaders. 

On the sea the German ruthless warfare against the merchant 
ships of the world was the matter of chief importance. Hundreds 
of ships of the Allies and of neutrals alike were sunk and thou- 
sands of lives of non-combatants destroyed. But this inhuman 
and lawless method of warfare resulted in much greater injury 

1 In December, at Brest-Litovsk. 2 October and November, 1917. 

3 March 11, 1917. An earlier attempt to take the city had ended in failure and the 
capture of the entire British army of 10,000 men at Kut-el-Amara, below Bagdad on the 
Tigris River (April 29, 1916). 



654 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 724 




to Germany than to her foes. Shocking as it did the universal 
conscience, it turned virtually the whole civilized world against her, 
724. Events of the Year 1918 ; the Armistice, November 11. 
The peace negotiations which the close of the year 19 17 saw in 
progress between Germany and the revolutionary leaders in Rus- 
sia left the once mighty Russian Empire, now fallen to pieces, 

entirely helpless in the hands of 
her conquerors/ With the pres- 
sure on the Eastern Front thus 
removed, the German high com- 
mand immediately transferred 
large bodies of troops from 
Russia to the Western Front, in 
hopes of gaining a military de- 
cision there before the United 
States could come with effective 
forces to the aid of her allies. 
With her armies in France thus 
strengthened, the Germans, late 
in March, launched their long- 
expected drive for Paris and the 
Channel ports. At the same 
time they began the bombard- 
ment of Paris with a monstrous 
long-range cannon, which was 
located seventy-five miles from 




Fig. 114. General Pekshixg 

(From a painting by J. F. Bouchor, 

Official Painter to the French 

Armies) 



the capital. A few days later a bomb from the huge gun fell 
upon a Paris church, where a large congregation was gathered at 
a Good Friday service, killing seventy-five persons and wounding 
ninety others. 

Under the terrific onset of the German armies the Franco- 
British lines were bent back with heavy losses, but were not 
broken. The situation was most critical. All the American 

1 The Brest-Litovsk Treaty, dictated by Germany, was signed by the representatives 
of the Bolshevik government of Lenine and Trotzky on March 2, 1918. The Allies 
refused to recognize the treaty, regarding it as a-settlement of violence and injustice, 
and one which laid all Asia open to German conquest and domination. 











t flfft ;^vp|it^ III.. 




'I il 



fV 



uutsa^ 




'J: 



The Rheims Cathedral of To-day. (From a photograph) 

"The most majestic and revered memorial of the Great War." The small insert 

shows the fallen roof and the wrecked interior, viewed from the apse and looking 

towards the towers 



§ 724] THE ARMISTICE 655 

soldiers in France, under General Pershing, were offered to Gen- 
eral Foch — who was invested with the supreme command of 
the armies of the Allies — to be used as he should deem best. At 
the same time urgent appeal was made to the United States gov- 
ernment to hurry to France all the reenforcements possible. In 
response to this call the shipping of troops across the sea was 
hastened. A steady flow of about a quarter of a million men 
each month was maintained until the close of the war, when the 
United States had in France a great army of over two millions. 
The transportation overseas of such a vast army was an un- 
precedented achievement, an achievement made possible only by 
the aid of British transports and the vigilant patrol of the seas 
against submarines by the British royal navy, now reenforced by 
the United States war fleet. 

Throughout the spring and early summer months the Germans 
renewed their offensive at intervals and made further gains. But 
hy the middle of July the drive had spent its force. The American 
army had by this time been so greatly augmented that the superi- 
ority in numbers was now on the side of the Allies. The tide of 
battle turned. A great counter-offensive was launched. The Ger- 
mans were hurled back across the Marne. The so-called Hinden- 
burg Line, a system of strong defenses, was broken, and the 
German armies began a general retreat from France towards the 
Belgian frontier. 

With the tide of battle on the Western Front thus running 
against the Germans, disaster was befalling their allies on other 
fronts. In Palestine the British forces under General AUenby, on 
the historic field of Armageddon, almost annihilated the Ottoman 
armies. The important cities of Damascus and Beirut fell into 
the hands of the British (October 2-9). At about the same time, 
on the Macedonian front, the Franco-Serbian forces inflicted upon 
the Bulgarian armies a defeat which, before the end of September, 
forced Bulgaria to sue for peace. This was granted on terms 
which meant a complete military surrender. 

The withdrawal of Bulgaria from the war, along with the re- 
verses in Syria and the critical situation on the Western Front, 



6S6 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 724 



caused Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Turkey simultaneously 
to ask through President Wilson for a general armistice '' on land 
and water and in the air" (October 5). The armistice was to be 
the forerunner of peace negotiations based on fourteen propositions, 
central among which was that of the self-determination of peoples, 
which President Wilson had formulated in various addresses. 

After an exchange of notes 
between President Wilson and 
the Central Powers, the matter 
was given over into the hands 
of the Supreme War Council of 
the Allies in France. Events 
now moved rapidly. Before the 
end of the month Turkey, 
hopelessly defeated, signed an 
armistice which amounted to 
unconditional surrender (Oc- 
tober 30), and four days 
later Austria-Hungary, with her 
armies in Italy routed and the 
monarchy rapidly dissolving 
into its various racial elements, 
sought and obtained an armis- 
tice on like conditions. At the 
same time the terms on which 
Germany might be granted a 
cessation of hostilities were formulated by the War Council of 
the Allies at Versailles, and the German government was in- 
formed that Marshal Foch would receive accredited represent- 
atives and communicate to them the conditions of an armistice. 
On Friday, November 8, a Gemian delegation reached the 
headquarters of Marshal Foch and were handed the armistice 
terms for acceptance or rejection by eleven o'clock on the follow- 
ing Monday. A few hours before the expiration of the time limit 
the armistice was signed by the German envoys. Among its con- 
ditions were these : ( i ) immediate evacuation by the German 




Fk;. 115. Marshal Foch. (From 
a photograph) 



§ 725] THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 657 

armies, without harm to persons or destruction of property, of 
all invaded countries, and withdrawal across the Rhine to a line 
about six miles from the right, or east, bank of that river ; (2) the 
surrender of all submarines and certain other ships of the German 
navy;^ (3) renunciation of the treaties of Bucharest and Brest- 
Litovsk ; and (4) the immediate repatriation of allied prisoners 
and deported civilians, the restitution of property wrongfully taken 
from invaded countries, and reparation for damage done in 
occupied territories. 

These conditions were in effect equal to full and unconditional 
surrender, and were such as to make it impossible for Germany, 
at the expiration of the truce period, to renew hostilities. 

Shortly before the signing of the armistice Emperor William, 
his mad dream of world dominion shattered, sought an asylum in 
Holland. He left Germany the scene of turmoil, revolution, and 
threatened anarchy.- 

- 725. The United States in the War in 1918. We have seen 
how, as the German offensive in the early spring of 19 18 assumed 
a menacing aspect, all the United States troops in France were 
put by General Pershing at the disposal of Commander-in-chief 
Foch. On May 27 the Germans launched their third drive and 
made a gain of ten miles, capturing Chateau-Thierry, on the north 
bank of the river Marne. They were now within about forty miles 
of Paris. A further advance of a few miles would put the city 
within reach of their guns. The situation was desperate. The 
American troops were hurried to the battle front. The yielding 
French lines were stiffened, and the German drive was checked. 
This marked the turn of the tide. The menace to Paris was 
removed. 

1 There was a total of seventy-one ships, including nine battleships. They were 
interned in Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands, Scotland, where, in violation of the obligations 
of the armistice, they were scuttled by their German crews, June 21, 1919. 

2 The German Revolution began at Kiel a few days before the signing of the armi- 
stice. For a moment it looked as though affairs would fall into the hands of the com- 
munists, or " Reds," as had happened in Russia. These extremists, however, were soon 
suppressed, and a constitution formed by a National Constituent Assembly, — which 
transformed, nominally at least, the German Empire into a "German Republic," — was 
adopted July 31, 1919. 



658 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 725 



A few days later (June 6) a comparatively small body of Amer- 
icans, marines and soldiers, made an attack upon a forest tract, 
known as Belleau Wood, near Chateau-Thierry, which the Ger- 
mans had made into a veritable machine-gun nest. Only after 
three weeks' bitter fighting did they succeed in clearing the forest 




From McMurry's I 



rapliy of the Great War, published by The Macmillan Company 



of the enemy. This was almost wholly an American accomplish- 
ment, and in recognition of the achievement the French govern- 
ment renamed the forest Marine Brigade Wood.^ 

While the x\merican soldiers on the battle front were thus help- 
ing to stop the German drive, back of the lines great preparations, 
under the direction of American engineers and experts of every 
kind, were being made for the reception, training, and equipment 



1 This was not the first American offensive. A Httle before this operation (on May 28, 
1918) a division made up of units of the Regular American Army had made, with con- 
spicuous gallantry, a successful attack upon a strong enemy position at Cantigny, near 
Montdidier. 



§ 725] THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 659 

of the greater armies yet to come from overseas. At selected base 
ports immense docks, warehouses, and storage plants were being 
hurriedly constructed ; at points farther inland great supply de- 
pots and acres of barracks were being erected ; artillery, aviation, 
and tank schools were being established ; training camps of every 
kind were being laid out, and immense hospitals with thousands 
of beds constructed and equipped ; hundreds of miles of spur rail- 
ways connecting the base ports and the multitude of camps, supply 
stations, and repair shops with the French system of railroads 
and with the long battle front were being laid out and pushed 
with feverish energy to completion ; in the French forests timber 
was being cut by American foresters ; and everywhere motor roads 
were being repaired and thousands of miles of telegraph and tele- 
phone wires were being strung. 

At the same time that all this was going on in France, the 
United States government, in response to the urgent appeals from 
the Allies for help, was, as we have seen, straining every resource 
to hasten the movement of troops from the training camps to over- 
seas. To refill the depleted home camps, a new registration of 
all men between eighteen and forty-five years of age was ordered 
(September 12). There were over twelve million registrants. 
"We solemnly purpose," proclaimed President Wilson, "a decisive 
victory of arms, and deliberately devote the major part of the 
military man power of the nation to the accomplishment of that 
purpose." The plan was to put in France by the early summer of 
19 19 an army of four million men, with a reserve of over a million 
in the home camps ; for at this time there was no expectation on 
the part of the Allies of bringing the war to a successful end in 
19 18. The best that they dared hope for was that they would be 
able to hold their lines through the summer and fall. 

The gathering and training of the man power of the nation — 
"the making of soldiers" — was but a small part of America's 
work of preparation for the stern task ahead ; for although only a 
small proportion of the men of military age were actually partici- 
pating in the fighting, a large part of the population was engaged 
in one way or another with activities that were closely associated 



66o THE WORLD WAR L§ 725 

with the war. This was so because modern warfare, besides requir- 
ing incredible quantities of miUtary munitions such as powder 
and shells, calls for artillery, machine-guns, tanks, aircraft, engines, 
automobiles, motor trucks, and supplies and eciuipment of every 
kind without limit. Accordingly the greater part of the industrial 
factories and manufacturing plants of the United States were 
now turned to the making of these things for the use of the vast 
armies that were being gathered and trained. 

It was a knowledge of the colossal scale of these preparations 
in America for the prosecution of the war to a successful issue, 
and the rapid transport, in spite of the submarine menace, of 
American soldiers by the hundreds of thousands to France, that 
doubtless, next to the successes of the armies of the Allies on the 
battle fronts, had most to do in breaking the German morale 
and thus causing the collapse of the German war-machine. 

On July 15 the Germans renewed their offensive — making 
their fifth and last drive — at the point on the Marne where they 
had been checked by the French and Americans in early June. 
They succeeded in crossing the Marne at some points, and gaining 
a foothold on the south bank of the river. But the Americans were 
now on or near this battle front, between Paris and the enemy, 
three hundred thousand strong. The Gerrrian drive was stopped, 
and then, on July 18, the Franco-American troops started a 
counter-offensive. The Germans were driven back across the 
Marne, and Chateau-Thierry, on its northern bank, was wrested 
from them. By August 5 the enemy had been pushed back all the 
way from the Marne to the Vesle, and the menacing Marne salient 
had been completely wiped out. The battle front now ran in a 
straight line between Rheims and Soissons. 

The flattening of the Marne salient was followed by the wiping 
out of the famous St. Mihiel salient, on the border of Lorraine, 
near the great fortress of Metz. This was the last menacing 
German wedge on the Western Front. The Germans had held this 
salient ever since their first advance in 1914. They had fortified 
it in every possible way, so that it was deemed impregnable. The 
capture of this salient was the first great military undertaking of 



§ 725] THE UNITED STATES IN THE WAR 66 1 

the Americans acting alone. The operation was carried out by the 
First American Army, the largest American force — it numbered 
about five hundred thousand — '' that had ever before taken part in 
any single battle in American history." In less than two days 
after the offensive was launched (September 12) the salient was 
cleared of the enemy, of whom more than fifteen thousand were 
taken prisoners. 

The moral effect of this achievement was tremendous, and it 
was hailed by the Allies, and especially by the French, with un- 
bounded enthusiasm. It meant the speedy liberation of France. 

Two weeks after the capture of the St. Mihiel salient, Franco- 
American forces launched another offensive (September 26), which 
had for one of its objectives a wooded plateau, known as the Ar- 
gonne Forest, lying between the Aisne and the Meuse, in the 
Champagne region, noted for its wines. This forest, which is over 
thirty miles long, had been made one of the strongest positions on 
the Western Front. The whole region was a perfect maze of 
trenches and wire entanglements with innumerable machine-gun 
nests. The Hindenburg Line ran through the forest. The defenses 
were held by the pick of the German troops. For over three weeks 
the Americans fought their way foot by foot through the tangled 
wood. At the end of this time the whole forest was in their hands. 

The capture of the Argonne Forest was the most notable 
achievement of the Americans during the war. The possession of 
this ground gave the Allies control of one of the two main German 
railway lines furnishing communication with Germany. This 
helped to make the German military situation impossible, and to 
force the acceptance by the German staff of the humiliating 
conditions of the armistice of November 11.^ 

To the foregoing brief recital of the part played by the United 
States in the war activities of 19 18 a word must be added re- 
specting the work carried on by the American Red Cross, the 

1 American forces were engaged in less important operations on other sectors of the 
Western Front. There were also units of the American troops in northern Russia, in 
eastern Siberia, and in Italy. As officially reported February 6, 1920, the revised list of 
American casualties showed a total of 293,067, of which number 215,423 were wounded, 
34,844 killed in action, and 42,800 died from wounds, disease, and accidents. 



662 THE WORLD WAR [§ 726 

Young Men's Christian Association, the Knights of Columbus, 
the Jewish Welfare Board, the Salvation Army, and numerous 
other organizations of like spirit and of similar purpose. These 
societies, generously supported by public subscriptions,^ not only 
rendered services of every kind to our soldiers in the training 
camps, on the battlefield, in the trenches, and in hospitals, but 
also gave relief to the civilian population of the countries where 
there were want and suffering caused by the war. 

726. Canada's Part in the War.- All the self-governing do- 
minions of the British Empire — ^ Canada, Australia, New Zealand, 
and South Africa — made notable records in the World War. 
None, however, played a nobler and more self-sacrificing part 
than the Dominion of Canada. 

Immediately upon the outbreak of the war, Canada, realizing 
the supreme issues involved in the conflict that Germany had 
precipitated, began to make hurried preparations for placing her 
contingents alongside the Imperial British forces on the battle 
lines. By the early spring of 191 5 Canadian troops were in the 
trenches on the Western Front, and at the second battle of Ypres, 
where the Germans treacherously made their first poison gas at- 
tack, they held the shaken lines with heroism beyond praise, and 
thereby saved the imperiled Channel ports, but only at the terrible 
cost of eight thousand killed and wounded. 

During the following year (19 16) the Canadian troops partici- 
pated in all the chief operations on the sector of the Western 
Front held by the British. They played a specially brilliant part, 
along with Australians and New Zealanders, in the long, bitterly 
contested first battle of the Somme (July-November) and helped 
to write that " enduring page in Anglo-Saxon history." 

In the early days of 19 17 the Canadian troops achieved added 
fame by their gallant storming, in the course of the operations of 

1 The American Red Cross alone received over ^400,000,000 in money and supplies, 
besides uncounied contributions of personal service, " by far the largest voluntary gifts 
of money, of hand and heart, ever contributed for the relief of human suffering." 

2 The statements of this section are based in large part on a report entitled 
"Canada's War Effort," by Sir Robert Laird Borden, Prime Minister of Canada 
(Simouds, History of the World il'ar, vol. iv, pp. 396-401). 



§ 12T\ THE BRITISH NAVY IN THE WAR 663 

the third battle of Ypres, of Vimy Ridge, a commanding height 
on the Belgian front. The capture of this position has been 
pronounced "one of the finest achievements of the whole war," 
Later in the year, on the same Belgian sector, the Canadians 
wrested from the enemy the strategically important high ground 
of Passchendaele Ridge. 

Throughout the last year of the war the Canadian Corps bore 
a full share in all the operations of the Allies in defense and at- 
tack. They aided in checking and holding down the great German 
drives during the early critical months of the year, and then, when 
through the arrival of United States troops in force the initiative 
had passed from the enemy, they participated in the general at- 
tack and advance of the Allies which resulted in the breaking of 
the Hindenburg Line, the iinal retreat of the German armies, and 
the liberation of the French and Belgian territories which the 
Germans had so long occupied and devastated. 

- Nothing, however, so impressively summarizes the greatness of 
Canada's effort and of her contribution to the winning of the war, 
or speaks so eloquently of the fortitude and gallantry of the 
Canadian Corps, as the figures of Canadian casualties during the 
four years of the conflict. Out of the more than four hundred 
and eighteen thousand men that Canada sent overseas nearly a 
hundred and fifty-six thousand were wounded and fifty-seven 
thousand lost their lives. And these were the flower of Canada's 
young manhood. 

727. The British Navy in the? War. The part played by the 
British navy in the World War affords an impressive illustration 
of the importance of sea power in history, for British command 
of the sea was undoubtedly the most vital factor in the great 
struggle. Without that command the war could not have been 
won by the Allies. 

At the outbreak of the war the British grand fleet was hurried 
to its chief observation station in northern Scotland. The German 
fleet was thus barred from the Atlantic and, by what might be 
called a long-distance blockade, was virtually shut up in its home 
ports. The few German cruisers at large were in a few months 



664 ' THE WORLD WAR [§ 728 

run down or driven to shelter.^ In this work the British navy 
was aided by the French and Japanese fleets. 

At the same time that the seas were freed from German raiders 
they were cleared of German merchant ships. Immediately upon 
the opening of hostilities these hurriedly sought refuge in home 
ports or in the harbors of neutral countries, where they were in- 
terned during the war. This closing of the seas to German ships 
and the keeping of them open to the ships of the Allies and of 
neutrals gave the powers fighting Germany a decisive advantage 
in the great struggle. '' It made the world the arsenal and granary 
of the Allies." 

With the seas once cleared of enemy ships, the services of 
the British navy, rendered throughout the dragging years of the 
war with traditional British heroism and tenacity, consisted in the 
patrol of the North Sea, in an unremitting watch upon the German 
grand fleet, in the maintenance of the blockade of the German 
ports, in clearing the seas of the mines laid by enemy submarines, 
and in the transport of millions of soldiers from all parts of the 
world to the battle areas in Europe, Asia, and Africa. In render- 
ing these and other like services the British navy during the first 
two years of the war — that is, before the British armies had 
become a real factor on the battle lines — made to the cause of 
the Allies a contribution without which the war would inevitably 
have been won by Germany.- 

728. German Submarine Warfare and its Results. There 
is a striking parallel between the policy of ruthless submarine 
warfare adopted by the Germans in the World War and Napoleon's 
arrogant Continental Blockade, which it will be worth our while 
to note here, particularly because of its relation to the subject 
of sea power. 

1 Two German cruisers, the Goebcn and the Breslau, in the Mediterranean, unfor- 
tunately escaped into the Dardanelles and became an important factor in drawing 
Turkey into the war on the side of the Central Powers. At the Falkland Islands, in the 
South Atlantic, the only German squadron on the seas was destroyed by the British, 
December 7, 1914. 

2 The single great battle fought during the war between considerable portions of the 
British and German grand fleet-s was the encounter off Jutland, May 31, 1916, which has 
already been noted (p. 644, n. i). 



§ 728] GERMAN SUBMARINE WARFARE 665 

It will be recalled how Napoleon, unable to reach his chief 
enemy, England, intrenched behind her navy-guarded island home, 
adopted the policy of a blockade of the Continent against British 
commerce, and how this policy, leading him on from one aggression 
to another and finally to the fatal campaigns against Spain and 
Russia, resulted at last in his undoing (sect. 564). Now, in like 
manner, Germany, unable to reach directly her formidable enemy 
England, adopted her illegal submarine policy, which, rousing 
against her the whole world and ultimately drawing the United 
States into the war on the side of the Allies, brought about her 
downfall and ruin/ 

It was in the third year of the war, it will be recalled, that 
Germany, now equipped with a large number of submarines, cast- 
ing aside all moral considerations, entered upon unrestricted sub- 
marine operations. During February and March the German 
U-boats sank over eight hundred vessels, both allied and neutral. 
A continuance of this rate of sinkings would have forced Great 
Britain to give up the struggle by September, leaving German 
power dominant in the world. "The submarine campaign of 191 7 
in its early months," asserts Simonds, ''came nearer to winning 
the war for Germany than the first campaign of the Marne or 
the colossal offensive of 1918."- 

The terrible menace was met and overcome in various ways. 
Among the means employed were the convoy system — that is, 
the sailing of merchant vessels in groups guarded by warships, 
a system impossible of effective adoption before the United States 
entered the wai* because of the lack of anti-submarine craft ; the 
use of depth bombs — bombs so timed as to explode only after 
reaching a certain depth in the water ; and the employment of 
observation airplanes, those " eyes of the army," which now used 
as eyes for the navy revealed the lurking submarines even when 
lying far beneath the surface of the ocean. By November of 191 7 

1 See Simonds, History of the World War, vol. ii, pp. 37-40. 
- The sinkings for each year of the war were as follows : 

1914 .... 314,694 tons 1917 .... 6,187,700 tons 

1915 .... 1,298,748 tons 1918 .... 2,675,520 tons 

1916 .... 2,291,437 tons 



666 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 729 



the crisis was past. The sinkings fell from nearly a million tons 
in April of that year to less than three hundred in September. 

The peril from the submarine activities was finally so reduced 
as to become almost negligible by the laying of a mine barrage 
from Scotland to Norway, which effectually closed the North Sea 
and prevented the enemy submarines from passing out into the 

Atlantic. The laying of this 
obstruction was one of the 
greatest engineering feats of the 
war. It was largely an achieve- 
ment of the American navy, 
aided by the British fleet. The 
barrage consisted of several lines 
of mines stretching from coast 
to coast, a distance of two 
hundred and thirty miles. It 
required the laying of over 
seventy thousand mines, of 
which about four fifths were 
laid by United States ships. 
The obstruction became effective 
in the early summer of 191 8, 
there being evidence that, in 
attempting to pass the barrier, 
more than a score of the German 
U-boats were destroyed. The 
construction of this barrage, destroying as it did the last hope of 
the Germans of winning the war with their submarines, helped 
materially in bringing the terrible struggle to an end. 

729. The Peace Convention at Paris and the Treaty of 
Versailles. Immediately upon the conclusion of the armistice the 
German government began the withdrawal of its armies from the 
ground on which they still stood in France and Belgium.^ At 

1 The demobilization of the armies of the Allies was now begun. By September 30, 
1919, the great United States army in Europe as well as the forces in the home camps 
(altogether about 4,000,000 men) had been returned to civil life, leaving overseas only 
a few thousand troops. 




(© Harris &: twing 

Fig. 116. Premier Clemenceau 
OF France. (From a photograph) 




y. V 



§ 729] 



THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES 



667 



the same time arrangements were being made for the meeting of 
the delegates of the allied and associated powers for framing a 
general treaty of peace. The Convention opened at Paris Janu- 
ary 18, 1919. Twenty-seven nations were represented in it. Presi- 
dent Wilson was the head of the delegation from America. 
Premier Clemenceau of France was president of the Convention. 

The work of the congress 
embraced a bewildering variety 
of matters, among which were 
(i) the drawing of the articles of 
definitive peace treaties ; (2) the 
settlement of the boundaries of 
Germany and of the new states 
created by the disintegration of 
the Austro-Hungarian monarchy 
and the Russian and Turkish 
empires; and (3) the framing 
of a covenant for a League of 
Nations. The work was divided 
among a great number of com- 
mittees or commissions, who 
were aided in their task by 
more than a thousand histor- 
ical, ethnological, geographical, 
and diplomatic experts. 

The work of framing the League of Nations covenant was first 
completed. The tentative draft of the epoch-making document 
was published February 14, 1919, and immediately became the 
subject of a world-wide discussion. The articles of the covenant 
were interwoven with and made a part of the treaty with Germany, 
and likewise a part of each of the separate treaties made with 
her allies. 

On June 28, 1919, in the famous Hall of Mirrors in the Trianon 
Palace at Versailles — the very hall in. which King William I, 
amidst imposing ceremonies, was proclaimed German Emperor in 
187 1 — the treaty with Germany, which was the first completed. 




© Harris & Ewing 

Fig. 1 1 7. Premier David Lloyd 

George of Great Britain. 

(From a photograph) 



668 



THE WORLD WAR 



[§ 729 



was signed by the representatives of the allied and associated 
powers on the one side and the delegates of Germany on the other. 
The important territorial readjustments that directly concerned 
Germany were as follows : Alsace-Lorraine were restored to France 
to redress the wrong done by Germany in 1871. The Saar basin, 
a rich German coal and iron region, was temporarily inter- 
nationalized and the mines of 
the district were ceded in full 
ownership to France as com- 
pensation for the wanton de- 
struction of French mines in 
the territories occupied by the 
German armies. 

To undo the wrong done 
to Denmark by Prussia in 
1864, such parts of Schleswig 
were to be reunited to Denmark 
as the inhabitants of these 
parts by free and secret vote 
should determine. 

On the East, Germany ceded 
Posen, West Prussia on the 
left bank of the Vistula, and 
parts of Silesia to the new 
Poland. These cessions were 
mainly restitutions of lands 
acquired by Prussia through the greatest international crime in 
the records of modern Europe prior to the violation of the neu- 
trality of Belgium by the Germans in 1914.^ Danzig, the Baltic 
port of old Poland, was made a free city and placed under the 
protection of the League of Nations. 

Germany was further required by the terms of the treaty to 
recognize the full sovereignty of restored Belgium and the inde- 
pendence of German Austria and of the new states of Czecho- 
slovakia and Poland, and to renounce all rights and privileges in 

1 See sects. 467, 475. 




© Harris & Ewinu 

Fig. 118. President WooDROW 
Wilson. (From a photograph) 



§ 729] 



THE TREATY OF VERSAILLES 



669 



her African colonies and other possessions outside of Europe in 
favor of the collective or individual allied and associated powers.^ 

The provisions of the treaty in regard to the German army, 
navy, and armament factories were of such a nature as to render 
Germany incapable of launching another war of aggression. They 
required that the army be reduced to one hundred thousand men ; 
that all factories for the manufac- 
ture of war munitions (save a few 
specifically excepted) should be 
closed; that the manufacture of 
poisonous gases should cease; that 
all military schools should be abol- 
ished; that no armed forces be 
maintained in a prescribed zone 
east of the Rhine; that all fortifi- 
cations and military establishments 
on the island of Helgoland, the 
"German Gibraltar," be destroyed 
''under the supervision of the 
Allies by German labor and at 
Germany's expense." 

In respect to responsibility for 
the war a special article of the 
treaty arraigned the kaiser in 
these words : " The allied and asso- 
ciated powers publicly arraign William II of Hohenzollern, for- 
merly German Emperor, for a supreme offense against international 
morality and the sanctity of treaties." His surrender was to be 
requested of Holland for trial before an international tribunal. 
All other persons who had committed acts in violation of the laws 
of war were to be given up by Germany for trial and punishment.^ 




© Harris & Ewing 

Fig. 119. Premier Orlando 
OF Italy. (From a photograph) 



1 Germany renounced in favor of Japan all rights, titles, and privileges that she had 
acquired in the province of Shantung by treaty or through "other arrangements" 
with China. 

2 By note dated January 15, 1920, the Supreme Council of the Peace Conference de- 
manded of the Netherlands government the extradition of the former Emperor William. 
The demand was refused by the Dutch government. 



670 THE WORLD WAR [§ 729 

By additional articles of the treaty Germany accepted the 
responsibility of herself and her allies for the war and bound her- 
self to restore the cars, industrial machinery, works of art, and 
other articles she had carried away from the countries she had 
overrun, and to pay such sum in reparation for damages inflicted 
as a commission might decide to be just and within her power. 

Concluding sections of the treaty provided that it should come 
into force as soon as ratified by Germany on the one hand and by 
three of the principal allied and associated powers on the other. 
By January 10, 1920, these requirements had been met, and on 
that date the treaty, through exchange of ratifications between 
Germany on the one part and France, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, 
Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Guatemala, Peru, Poland, Siam, Czecho- 
slovakia, and Uruguay on the other part, became effective between 
the powers that had ratified it. This left the United States the 
only great power still nominally at war with Germany, the Senate 
of the United States having up to this time refused to ratify the 
treaty. 

Two days later President Wilson in compliance with a provision 
of the covenant of the League of Nations issued a call for the 
first meeting of the Council of the League in Paris on January 16, 
1920. In transmitting this summons to the governments con- 
cerned, President Wilson suggested the deep significance of the 
meeting in these words : "It will mark the beginning of a new 
era in international cooperation and the first great step toward 
the ideal concert of nations." 

On the day named in the call the Council met in Paris, and the 
League of Nations thus came into real and active being. Into 
what it may grow is hidden in the times to come.^ 

1 About two months after the signing of the treaty with Germany there was signed 
at St. Germain (September lo, 19 19) a treaty, similar to it in essentials, between the 
allied and associated powers and Austria, which was now merely a pitiful fragment, with 
a population of about 7,000,000, of the old Austria-Hungary. By the terms of this treaty 
Austria was required to cede to Italy the Trentino and Trieste, and acknowledge the 
independence and sovereignty of the new states — Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Jugo- 
slavia — which had been formed in whole or in part out of provinces of the disrupted 
Austro-Hungarian monarchy. She was further required to assume the title of Republic 
of Austria, and was forbidden to unite with Germany without the consent of the Council 



30 Longituae 20 Wost 10 



Longitude 10 East 




Loncritude 



Settled boundaries 



Unsettled boundaries 




^^M^S^^E [^ =^i 



Greenwich 40 



vereignty to be determined 
by popular vote 



Areas under control of the 
League of Nations 



§ 730] SOME RESULTS OF THE WORLD WAR 671 

730. Some Assured Results of the World War. Not until 
sufficient time has elapsed to prove the stability of the work of 
the Paris Peace Conference will it be possible to make anything 
like a complete appraisal of the results of the World War. How- 
ever, there are already certain assured outcomes of the fateful 
struggle of which we should here make note because of their rela- 
tion to the democratic, nationalistic, and world- federative move- 
ments, — those great drifts in universal history which it has been 
a chief purpose of ours to portray in the foregoing pages. 

First, the war has imparted a fresh impulse to the democratic 
movement. This it has done by discrediting irretrievably auto- 
cratic, militaristic government and demonstrating the strength and 
superiority of government based on individual freedom and popular 
sovereignty. It has brought definitely to an end government by 
divine-right kings and established practically everywhere govern- 
ment by the people. It has called into existence more than a 
dozen new republics. It has " made the world safe for democracy." 

Second, the war has greatly promoted the nationalistic move- 
ment. Precipitated by a great imperial power whose aim was world 
dominion, this challenge to the spirit of nationality has resulted 
in the overthrow and destruction of every oppressive imperialistic 
power remaining in the world — Hohenzollern, Hapsburg, Roman- 
off, and Ottoman — and has brought about the regrouping of their 
liberated peoples in accordance with the aspirations of race and the 
spirit of nationalism. If the war had had no other result than 
the creation of these nation-states, — Finland, Poland, Czecho- 
slovakia, Jugoslavia, and the rest, — that alone would go far 
to compensate humanity for the unmeasured losses and sacrifices 
of the titanic war. 

Third, the war has given a great impulse to the historic trend 
toward the definite organization of the world. This is doubtless 
historically the most significant outcome of the great struggle, for 
the formation of the League of Nations, although the federation 

of the League of Nations. The treaty between the Allies and Bulgaria was signed on 
November 27, igig. Neither the treaty with Hungary nor that with Turkey had been 
completed at this date. 



672 THE WORLD WAR [§ 730 

as yet embraces only a part of the sovereign and independent 
nations of the world, carries the pledge and promise of the ultimate 
consummation of that age-long movement towards world union 
which, in the grouping of warring clans and tribes into city-states 
and petty kingdoms, began in the obscurity of prehistoric times. 

References. On the background and causes of the war: Bernhardi, 
Friedrich von, Germany and the Xc.xt War. Smith, T. F. A., The Soul of 
Gervmiiy- UsHER, R. G., Pan-Gerniaiiisni. Cheradame, A., The Pan-Gennan 
Plot Unmasked. Gerard, J. W., My Four Years in Germany. W^OODS, H. C, 
The Cradle of the War. Jastrow, M., The War and the Bagdad Raihvay. 
Seymour, C, The Diplomatic Background of the liar. Stowell, E. C, The 
Diplomacy of the War of igi 4. '&CY^^5K^^^^s,]. Ox., The Balkan Wars. Gibbons, 
H. A., The N'eiv Map of Europe. Davis, S. D. (with collaborators). The Roots 
of the War. Beck, J. M., The Evidoice in the Case. Lichnowsky, Prince 
Karl, The Guilt of Germany. Grelling, R., / Accuse! (published anony- 
mously during the war). The text of the official documents (the " British 
White Paper," the " German White Book," the " French Yellow Book," etc.) 
of the belligerent governments bearing on the outbreak of the war will be found 
in convenient form in the pamphlets issued by The American Association for 
International Conciliation, 407 West 117th St., New York City. 

On the years of the war : Whitlock, B., Belgium jinder German Occupa- 
tion. 2 vols. MoRGENTHAU, IL, Ambassador Morgenthau's Stoty. Bassett, 
J. S., Our War with Germany. McMaster, J. B., The United States in the 
World War. U.sher, R. G., The Stoiy of the Great War (for young readers). 
SiMONDS, F. H., History of the World JVar, 5 vols, (only four volumes issued at 
this writing, April, 1920). The A'eiv York Times Current History; The European 
War, 20 vols. The war-time Committee on Public Information having discon- 
tinued its activities its publications (" The President's Flag Day Address," " Con- 
quest and Kultur," " German War Practices," " The War Message and the Facts 
behind It," etc.) are now distributed, without cost, except for carriage, while the 
supply lasts, by The World Peace Foundation, 40 Mt. Vernon St., Boston. 



INDEX AND PRONOUNCING VOCABULARY 



Note. In the case of words whose correct pronunciation has not seemed 
to be clearly indicated by their accentuation and syllabication, the sounds of 
the letters have been denoted thus: a, like a \xigray; a, like a, only less pro- 
longed ; a, like a in have; a, like a m.fdr\ a, like a in all; e, like ee in meet; 
e, like e., only less prolonged; e, like e in end\ e, like e in there ', e, like e in 
err; i, like / xvipine; i, like i m. pvi ; 5, like o in note; 6, like o, only less pro- 
longed ; 6, like o in 7tot ; 6, like o in orb ; oo, like oo in wc>t);; ; 66, like oo in 
hood; u, like ?/ in use ; ii, like the French ti ; c and ch, like k ; 9, like s ; g, like 
gmget; g, like/; s, likes; ch, as in German <?(// ; G, small capital, as in German 
Hamburg; 11, like iii in minion; li denotes the nasal sound in French, being 
similar to ng in song. 



Abbasids (abas'idz), dynasty of the, 

53 n. I _ 

Abdul Hamid (ab'dool ha med'), 629 
Ab'e lard, Peter, 171 
Abu Bekr (a'boo bek'r), first caliph, 

51 n. I 
Abukir Bay (a boo ker'), battle of, 473 
Ab ys sin'i a, 598 n. i 
Acre (a'ker), siege of, by crusaders, 

123 ; by Bonaparte, 473 
Ad ri an o'ple, Treaty of, 572 
Afghan War, first, 592 ; second, 592 

n.3 
Af ghan is fan', 592 n. 3 
A fra si ab', Persian legendary hero, 

149 n. I 
Africa, Portuguese exploration of, 

250; partition of, 5S9 ; English in, 

594-597; French in, 597, 598;. 

Germans in, 600 
Africa, North, recovery of, by Jus- 
tinian, 9 ; conquest of, by the 

Arabs, 51 
Agincourt (a'zhan koor"), battle of, 1 89 
A'gra, 146 
Aids, feudal, 78 
Airplanes, 665 
Aisne (an), river, 661 
Aix-la-Chapelle (aks-la-sha pel') (Ger. 

Aachen), Treaty of (1748), 415 
Albert, archbishop of Mainz, 269 
Albert of Brandenburg, 276 n. i 
Albert, duke of Austria, 214 
Albert, king of the Belgians, refuses 

German demand for passage of 

troops, 634 



Albert the Great, Schoolman, 173 

Albi (al be'), 129 n. 2 

Al'bT gen"ses, crusades against, 129 

Alcuin (al'kwin), 65 

Aldine Press, at Venice, 236 

Al'dus Ma nu'tl us, 236 

Alembert, d' (a loii bar'), 445 

Alexander I, Tsar, at Tilsit, 4S7 ; at 
Erfurt, 491 ; war with Napoleon, 
499, 500; in Holy Alliance, 513; 
II, emancipates serfs, 575; assas- 
sinated, 577 

Alfred the Great, king of England, 72 

Algeria, 597 

AH (a'le), caliph, 51 n. i 

Allenby, British general, 655 

Almansur (al man soor'), caliph, 53 

Alphonso, king of Castile, emperor- 
elect H. R. E., 211 

Al siice' (Ger. Elsass), ceded to 
France, 342; to Germany (1871), 

^520, 521 ; restored to France, 668 

Al'va, duke of, in Netherlands, 326 

America, discovered by Northmen, 7 1 

Amiens (ii me ah'). Treaty of, 478 

Anabaptists, 275 n. 2 

Anagni (a nan'ye), 139 

Anchorites. See Hermits 

Anglo-Saxons, conquest of Britain, 
II. See England 

An gS'ra, battle of, 148 n. 2 

Anjou (oh'zhoo), French province, 
179 

Annates, 272 n. 1 ; Act of, 303 

Anne of Brittany, 201 

Anne of Cleves, 308 



673 



674 



INDEX 



Antioch, taken by crusaders, 120 
Antipodes (an tip'6 dez), the, 256 
Antony of Bourbon, king of Navarre, 

336 
Antwerp, Spanish fury at, 329 
Appeals, Act in Restraint of, 303 
A qui'nas, Thomas, 173 
Arabian Alg/its, 55 
Arabic system of notation, 56 n. i 
Arabs, origin and character, 47 ; 

religious condition before Moham- 
med, 47. See Saracens and Moors 
Aragon, union with Castile, 205 
Arbitration, Court of, created by First 

Hague Conference, 615 
Archaeology, science of, created by 

classical revival, 244 
Architecture, mediaeval, 163, 164 ; 

Romanesque, 164; Gothic, 164 
Argonne (ar gon') Forest, the, 661 
Arkwright, 430 n. i 
Ar ma'da, Invincible, 318-320 
Armageddon (ar ma ged'on), battle 

of, 655 
Armistice (of November 11, 191S), 

656, 657 
Arthur, King, 12 

Articles of Religion, Anglican, 311 
As'pern, battle of, 493 
Assassination, political, 330 n. i 
" Assiento " (as e en'to), the, 421 
Assignats (as'ig nats ; Fr. pron. 

a se fia'), 454 n. 2 
Assisi (a se'se), 136 
Assuan (as swan'), 597 
As tu'ri as, the, 204 
Athanasius (ath a na'shi us), 24 
Athens, dukedom of, 124 
Attainder, bill of, 30S n. i 
Attila, legend'of, 30 n. i 
Auerstadt (ou'er stet), battle of, 486 
Augsburg, Religious Peace of, 290 ; 

Confession, 291 n. i ; League of, 363 
Au'gus tine, his mission to Britain, 16 
Augustus the Strong, 407 
Ausgleich (ous'gUch), the, 567 
Austerlitz (ous'ter lits), battle of, 485 
Australasia, 591 n. i 
Australia, Commonwealth of, 591 ; in 

the World War, 643, 662 
Austria, House of, 212 n. i ; imperial 

crown becomes hereditary in, 214; 

Italian interests of, 540-548 ; in 

Austro-Hungarian monarchy, 567- 

569 



A wtria-Hungary, from 1866 to 1914, 
567-569 ; in the World War, 633, 
640 

Austrian Succession, War of, 414 

Austro-Prussian War, 560 

Austro-Sardinian War, 546 

Auto-da-fe (a't6-da-fa"), the, 206 

Avignon (a'ven'yon"), removal of 

_ papal seat to, 139 

A'von, river, 195 

A'zov, Russians capture, 403 

Aztecs, 258 

Ba'ber, founder of Mongol state in 

India, 146 
Bacon, Francis, 323 n. i, 374 ; Roger, 

Bagdad, founded, 53 ; captured by 
the British, 653 ; Bagdad Railway, 
622 

Baj a zet' or Baj'a zet I, 148 n. 2 

Bal bu'a, Vasco de, 258 n. i 

Baldwin of Flanders, Latin emperor 
of the East, 123 

Balkans, the, 626-628 ; Balkan wars 
of 1912, 1913, 631 

Balliol (bal'i ol), John, Scottish king, 
184 

Ban'nock burn", battle of, 185 

Barebone, Praise-God, 3S5 

Biir'ne veld, John of, 331 n. i 

Barrage (bar'raj or bar raj'), mine, laid 
in North Sea, 666 

Ba'sel (Fr. Bale), treaties of, 471 n. i 
-Bastille (bas tel'), storming of the, 452 

Batavian Republic (this had been 
created in 1795), made into king- 
dom of Holland, 483 

Bautzen (bout'sen), battle of, 501 

Bavaria, kingdom, 485 ; in German 
Empire, 563 

Ba zaine'. Marshal, 520 
-Becket. See Thomas Becket 
-Bede (bed), the Venerable, 20 n. i 

Bedouins (bed'oo enz), the, 47 

Begging friars. See Mendicant friars 

Beirut (ba'root), captured by the 
British, 655 

Belgium, war of Louis XIV concern- 
ing, 361 ; ceded to Austria, 365 ; 
revolution in, 434 ; ceded to France, 
472 ; in kingdom of Netherlands, 
509 ; becomes independent king- 
dom, 518; violation of neutrality 
by Germany, 635-637 



INDEX 



67s 



Bel i sa'ri us, general, 9, 43 

Belleau (bel 16') Wood, 654 

Bel ler'o phon, the, 504 

Benares (be na'rez), 1 1 1 

Iknedetti (ba na det'te), French am- 
bassador, 562 

Benedictines, order of the, 25 

Benevolences, 299 
J Beowulf (ba'o wulf), Saxon poem, 19 

Beresina (ber e ze'na), 500 

Ber'gen, 156 

Berlin' (Ger. pron. berlen'). Decree, 
489; Treaty of {1S78), 574 

Berlin-Bagdad Railway, 622 

Bernstorff (bern'shtorf), German am- 
bassador, 648 

Bes sa ra'bi a, ceded to Russia, 574 
n. 2 

Bethmann-HoUweg (bet'man-hol'veg) , 
German Chancellor, 635 

Beziers (ba'ze a"), 129 

Bible, Luther's, 274; King James' 
Version, 373 

Bishops' War, 377 

Bi^'marck, Otto von, 558 ; conflict 
with the Prussian Parliament, 558 ; 
as Prussian prime minister, 55S- 
563 ; as Imperial Chancellor, 565- 
567 

Black Death, the, 1S7 ; effect on 
wages in England, 188 

Black Hole of Calcutta, 426 n. 3 

Black Prince, the, 188 n. 2 

" Bloody Assizes," the, 393 n. i 

Bliich'er, 503 

Boccaccio (bok kat'chS), his Decam- 
eron, 231 ; as a humanist, 231 

Boers (boors), the, 594-596 

Bohemia, in Thirty Years' War, 343 

Bo'he mond, prince of Otranto, 119 

Boleyn, Anne (boSl'in), 302 ; mar- 
riage, 303 ; death, 307 

Bolingbroke (bol'in brSok), 442 n. 2 

Bologna (bo lon'ya), University of, 
167 

Bolsheviki (bol'shev e ke"), the, 653 

Bonaparte. S^^^ Jerome, Joseph, Louis, 
N'apoleoii 

B5'ra, Catherine von, 272 n. 2 

Bordeaux (bor do'), 521 

Borodino (borode'no), battle of, 499 

Borromeo (borroma'6). Carlo, 279 

Bos'ni ii, administered by Austria- 
Hungary, 574 ; the Bosnian crisis of 
1908, 629 



Bosphorus (bos'fo rus), the, 52 
Bossuet (bo sii a'), 353-354, 367 n. i 
Bosworth Field, battle of, 192 
Botany Bay, 591 

Boulogne (boo Ion'), camp at, 484 
Bourbon, House of, accession in 

France, 338 ; in Spain, 364-365 ; 

restored in France, 508 ; in Naples, 

540 ; heirs expelled from France, 

522 _ 

. Bourgeoisie (boor zhwii ze ), 440 
Boxer revolt, 605 
Boyne, battle of the, 3^8 
Bradshaw, 390 
Brandenburg, electorate of, under the 

Hohenzollerns, 412 
Brazil, falls to Portugal, 253 n. 2 ; 

Portuguese royal family flee to, 490 
Brest- Litovsk (brest-le tovsk'). Treaty 

of, 654 n. I 
Briel (brel), 328 
Bright, John, 528 n. i, 534 
Britain, Anglo-Saxon conquest of, 12. 

See England 
British Empire in India, 426, 592, 593 
British Navy in the World War, 663, 

664 
Brittany, origin of name, 12 n. i 
Bruce, Robert, king of Scotland, 184 
Brii'ges (Fr. pron. briizh), 156 
Bru maire', Revolution of, 474 
Brunelleschi (broo nel les'ke), 239 n. 3 
Bruno, Giordano, 280 
Budapest, 567 
Bulgaria, 574 n. 2 ; in the Balkan 

Wars, 631, 632 ; treaty with the 

Allies (1919), 670 n. i 
Bundesrath (b5tin"d4s rat'), the, 564 
Bunyan, John, 390 
Burghley (bur'li). Lord, 314 
Butler, Samuel, 395 
Byron, Lord, 571 n. i 
Byzantine Empire. See E(ister>t Em- 
pire 

Cabinet, English, 423 

Cab'ot, John, 299 

Cabot, Sebastian, 300 

Caed'mon, poet-monk, 20 

Cahiers (ka ya'), 448 

Calcutta, Black Hole of, 426 n. 3 

Calendar, French Revolutionary, 465 

Caliphate of Bagdad, established, 53 ; 
Golden Age of, 53 ; dismember- 
ment of, 53, 54 



676 



INDEX 



Calmar, Union of, 221 
■Calvin, John, at Geneva, 277 n. i ; 

burns Servetus, 280 
Calvinists, 277 

Cam ba lu', Mongol capital, 146 
Cam bo'di a River, 599 
Cambronne (kon bron'), 503 n. i 
Campagna (kam pan'ya), 551 
Campo Formio (kam'po for'me d). 

Treaty of, 472 
Canada, under Louis XIV, 365 ; ceded 

to England, 369 ; Dominion of, 589, 

590 ; her part in the World War, 

662, 663 
Ca nos'sa, Henry IV's humiliation at, 

108 
Can ta'bri a, 204 

Cantigny (koii'ten'ye"). 658 n. i 
Ca niite', king of England, 73 
Ca'pet, Hugh, king of France, 197 
Capetians. See France 
Cape-to-Cairo Railway, 596 
Capitularies of Charlemagne, 64 
Car bo na'ri, 5^ i 
Carnar'von, castle,. 1S3, 1S4 
Carnot (kar no'), Sadi, 522 n. 2 
Car o lin'gi an family, beginning of, 60 
Carrier (kiirya'), 46S 
Cartwright, 430 
Casimir-Perier (kazi mer'-parya'), 522 

n. 2 
Cas'si o d5"rus, Theodoric's minister, 

8 
Castile (kaster),the name, 204 ; union 

with Aragon, 204 
Castles, feudal, 83 
Cateau-Cambresis (ka to'-koh bra ze'). 

Peace of, 293. n. i 
Cathedral building, 163, 164 
Catherine II the Great, reign, 409- 

411 
Catherine de' Medici (de ma'de che), 

335' 337 

Catholic Emancipation Act, 533 

Cavaliers, 379 

Cavour (kii voor'), Count, 544, 545, 
546, 548 

Caxton, William, 196 

Cecil, William. See Burghley 

Celibacy of the clergy, 105 

Celtic Church, 18, 19 

Celts, at opening of the Middle Ages, 
6; Christianity among, 17-19; con- 
version of Irish Celts by St. Patrick, 
17 



Cenis (se ne'), Mount, tunnel, 545 

Cer van'tes, 93 

Champagne (sham pan'), 661 

Channel ports, struggle for, in World 
War, 63S 
_ Charlemagne (shar'le man), king of 
Franks, 59-66; his wars, 60, 61; 
restores the Empire in the West, 
62 ; as a ruler, 63 ; his Palace 
School, 65 ; his death, 65 ; results 
of his reign, 65 ; division of his 
dominions, 66 

Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, 

201 
. Charles Martel, at battle of Tours, 

54, 59 

Charles the Simple, king of the 
Western Franks, 73 

Charles I, king of England, reign, 
374-382; II, reign, 390-392 

Charles IV, king of France, 187 ; 
VI, 189 ; VII, 190 ; VIII, 201 ; IX, 
336, 337; X, 516 

Charles V, Emperor H. R. E., com- 
missions Magellan, 254 ; at Diet of 
Worms, 273 ; narrative of reign, 
286-292 ; his abdication, 291 
-Charles XII, king of Sweden, 406, 
407, 408 

Chartism, 528 

Chateau-Thierry (sha to'-te ar're"),657 

Chatham. See Pitt 

Chaucer, Geoffrey, 193 

Chev'i ot (or chiv'i ot) Hills, 300 n. i 

Chil'de ric, last Merovingian king, 60 

Children's Crusade, the, 125 

China, question of partition of, 603 ; 
war with Japan, 604 ; dismember- 
ment of, 605 ; Boxer uprising, 605 ; 
republic of, 608 

Chivalry, origin of, 88 ; its universal- 
ity, 89 ; training of the knight, 89 ; 
ceremony of knighting, 90; the 
tournament, 90, 91 ; character of 
the knight, 91 ; decline of the sys- 
tem, 93 ; good in the system, 93-95 

Christian IV, king of Denmark, 344 

Christianity, as factor in mediseval 
history, 4 ; introduced among the 
Teutonic tribes, 14-21 ; progress 
of, before the fall of Rome, 1 5 ; 
introduced into Russia, 21 ; reacted 
upon by paganism, 22 ; in French 
Revolution, abolished, 465 

Chronicle, Anglo-Saxon, 72 n. i 



INDEX 



677 



Church, early constitution of, 28 ; 

separation of the Eastern from the 

Western or Latin Church, 32. See 

Papacy 
_ Church Councils: Council of Nicaea, 

1 5 ; of Pisa, 1 4 1 ; of Constance, 141; 

of Trent, 279; Vatican (i 869-1 870), 

550 n. I 
Church property, in France, nation- 
alized, 454 
Cid, poem of the, 207 
Cimabue (che ma boo'a), 240 n. 2 
Cisalpine Republic, first, 472; second, 

478, 482 
Civil Code, 480 
Civil Constitution of Clergy, in 

French Revolution, 454 
Civil War (i 642-1 649), in England, 

379-382 
Clarendon, Constitutions of, 178 
Clarkson, Thomas, 429 
"Clemenceau (Eng. pron. clem en s5'), 

French Premier, 667 
_ Clermont (kler moh'), Council of, 118 
- Clive, Robert, 426 
-Clo'vis, king of the Franks, 9, 10 ; his 

conversion, 15 
Cluny (klii ne'), monastery of, 26; 

center of reform, 26 
Cobden, Richard, 528 n. i 
Codes : Justinian Code, 43, 44 ; Code 

Napoleon, 480 
-Coligny (ko len ye'), Gaspard de, 336, 

338 
Colonization, European, 585-587. See 

national titles such as English 

Colonies 
Columbus, Christopher, importance 

of his achievement, 250-252 
Commons, English House of, origin, 

181-183. See Parliainent, English 
Commonwealth of England, 382-385 
Commune, Revolutionary, of Paris, 

452 
Compass, invention of, 249 n. i 
"Concordat, French, of 1801, 479; 
annulled, 523 
Conde (koh da'), Prince of, 336 
Confederation of the Rhine, 485 
Congo Free State, 588 
Conrad III, Emperor H. R. E., 122 
Constance, Church Council of, 141 
Con'stan t!ne VI, Eastern emperor, 62 
Constantinople, besieged by Sara- 
cens, 51 ; captured by crusaders. 



123-125; captured by Ottoman 
Turks, 148 

Constituent Assembly, French, 450- 
456 

Constitutions: Austria (1849), 55^, 
557; (1867), 568; England, 385; 
France (1791), 456; (1795), 47°; 
(1799). 477; (1814). 502; (1848), 
518; Hungary (1867), 568; Nether- 
lands (1814), 511; Norway (1814), 
511; Prussia (1850), 557; Sardinia 
(184S), 544 n. I ; Turkey, 628 n. i 

Consulate, French, 477-481 

" Contemptibles," the, 638 n. 2 

Continental Blockade, 489 

Conventicle Act, 390 

Convention, French National, 459-470 

Cook, James, Captain, 591 

Copenhagen bombarded, 490 

Co per'ni cus, Nicholas, 248 n. i 
~ Cor day', Charlotte, 462 

Cordeliers (Eng. pron. kor'de lers"), 
Club, 455 

Cor'do-va, 52 
"Corn Laws repealed, 528 n. i 

Corneille (kor nay'), 367 

Cor 6 man'del, 415 
•Corporation Act repealed, 532 

Cor'pits Jii'ris Civi'lis, 43 

Correggio (kor red'jo), 240 n. 2 

Cortes (kor'tes), Spanish, 165 n. i 

Cortes (Span. pron. kor tas'), Her- 
nando, 258 

Co riin'na, battle of, 493 n. i 

Coster of Haarlem, 235 n. i 

Council of the North, 376 n. i 

Counter-Reform, Catholic, 279-2S2 

Coup d'Etat (koo da ta') of Brumaire, 
474 

Court of Arbitration, International,6i 5 

Covenanters, 377 ; persecution of, 391 

Cranmer, Thomas, 312 

Crecy (Eng. pron. kres'se), battle of, 
187 

Crimean War, 572 

Crompton, 430 n. i 

Cromwell, Oliver, parliamentary 
general, 379-385; Protector, 385- 
387; treatment of body, 390 

Cromwell, Richard, 387 

Cromwell, Thomas, 302 ; death, 
308 n. I 

Crusades, enumerated, no; causes 
of, 110-116; circumstances favoring, 
116; legend of Peter the Hermit, 



678 



INDEX 



117; Councils of Piacenza and 
Clermont, 118; narrative of the 
Crusades in the East, 1 19-1 27 ; Cru- 
sades in Europe, 127-129; their re- 
sults for European civilization, 130- 
133. See Contents 

Curfew, the, 100 

Customs Union, German, 555 

Cuzco (kobz'kd), 260 

Cyprus, ceded to England, 574 

Cyrenaica (sir e na'i ka), seized by 
Italy, 631 

Czechoslovakia (chek'o slo viik'i a), 
670 n. I 

Czechs (chechs or cheks), 569 

Danes. See Sca^idinavians 

Danish Wars, 559 

Dante, Alighieri (a le ge a're), pre- 
cursor of the Renaissance, 225, 226; 
his ComnieJia, 226 

Dan'ton (Fr. pron. don ton'), in Con- 
vention, 459 ; death, 467 

Danzig' (dant'zich), made a free city, 
668 

Dardanelles (dar da nelz'), attempt to 
force by Anglo-French fleet (1915), 

643 
Dark Ages, the, character of, i, 2 
Darnley, Henry Stuart, Lord, 317 
Declaration of Indulgence, 393; of 

Rights, 394 ; of the Rights of 

Man, 454 
Delhi (del'liT), 146 
Demarcation, Papal Line of, 253 
Denmark, in Thirty Years' War, 344 ; 

Continental Blockade, 489 ; loses 

Norway, 509 n. i ; Schleswig- 

Holstein War, 559. See Calntar, 

Union of 
Descartes (da kiirt'), 367 n. i 
Deschanel (da sha nel'), M., 522 n. 2 
Des 1 de'ri us, king of the Lombards, 

deposed by Charlemagne, 61 
Dias (de'as), Bartholomew, 250 
Diderot (de dro'), 445 
Directory, French, 470-475 
Disestablishment, in Ireland, 533 ; 

proposed in England, Scotland, 

and Wales, 535 
Disraeli (diz ra'li), 534 
Divina Commctlia (de ve'na kom ma'- 

de a), 226 
Divine Right of Kings, the theory, 

350-357 ; expounded by Louis XIV, 



35S; expounded by James I, 370; 

expounded by Emperor William II, 

617 
Doge (doj), the name, 158 
Dogger Bank, 614 n. 3 
Domesday Book (dobmz"da'), 99, 100 
Dominicans, order of the, 136-138 
Don Quixote (Sp. pron. don ke ho'te), 

93 
Don a tel'lo, 239 n. 3 
Donation of Constantine, 32 n. 2 ; its 

unhistorical character shown by 

Valla, 245 
Dragonnades (drag o nadz'), 363 
Drake, Francis, 320 
. Dreyfus (drl'fus), Alfred, 523 n. 2 
Drogheda (droch'e da), 383 
Dual Alliance, the, 625 n. i 
.Duma, Russian, 577, 578 
Dunajec (doo na'yets), battle of the, 

640 n. 4 
Dunant (dli non'), Henri, 546 n. i 
Dunbar, battle of, 384 
Duquesne (dii kan'). Fort, 425 
Dutch. See lYetherlanJs 
Dutch colonies, 444 ; at the Cape, 

594 ; in East Indies, 594 n. i 

East India Company, English, 373, 593 

Eastern Empire, sketch of history, 
43-46; becomes Creek, 45; serv- 
ices of, to European civilization, 
45 ; effects upon, of Crusades, 
130 _ 

Eastern Rumelia (roo me li a), 594 n. 2 

Ebro (a'bro), river, 491 

Ecclesiastical Reservation, 291 

Edda, the, 71 

E des'sa, 121 

I'-dict, of Nantes, 339 ; revoked, 362 ; 
of Grace, 341 ; of Emancipation in 
Prussia, 498 ; Emancipation Code 
in Russia, 575 

Education, English act, 529 ; ques- 
tion in France, 522, 523 

Education, reformed by the New 
Learning, 243 

Edward, the Confessor, king of Eng- 
land, 73; his death, 97; I, 183, 
185 n. 2; II, 1S5; III, 186; V'l, 
reign, 310, 31 1 

Eg'bert, king of Wessex, 12 

Egmont, 327 

Egypt, conquest of, by Saracens, 51 ; 
England in, 596 



INDEX 



679 



Einhard (In'hard), secretary of 
Charlemagne, 64, 67 

Elba, 501 

Elbe (elb ; Ger. pron. el'be), river, 347 

Electors, the Seven, of Germany, 210 

Elizabeth, queen of England, reign, 
313-322 

Elizabeth, tsaritsa, 416 

Ems dispatch, the, 562 

En cel'a dus, legend of, 517 

Encyclopedists, 445 

England, origin of name, 12 ; Anglo- 
Saxon conquest of, 11; Christian- 
ity in, 16; results of conversion of 
Anglo-Saxons, 16; reign of Alfred 
the Great, 72 ; Danish conquest, 
73 ; Saxon line restored, 73 ; Norman 
conquest and rule, 97-102 ; under 
the houses of Plantagenet, Lan- 
caster, and York, 177-196; loss of 
possessions in France, 179; con- 
quest of Wales, 183; wars with 
Scotland, 1S4-186; Hundred Years' 
War, 186, 187 ; Wars of the Roses, 
192; under the Tudors, 29S-323 
in seventeenth century, 370-398 
in eighteenth century, 420-432 
since Waterloo, 5-5-539- See Con- 
tents 

Enlightened Despots, the, 356, 357 ; 
exemplified by Catherine II, 409; 
by Frederick II, 418; by Joseph 
II, 433-435 ; by Napoleon, 478-4S1 

Episcopate, the, 28 

E ras'mus, Desiderius, 266 

Er'furt, Congress of, 491 

Eritrea (a re tra'a), 598 n. i 

Erzerum (erz room'), 644 n. 2 

Eschenbach (esh'en bach). Wolfram 
of, 215 n. 2 

Es co'ri al, the, 293 n. i 

Essenes (es senz'), the, 23 n. i 

Estates-General. See States- General 

Eugene of Savoy, Prince, 365 n. 2 

Ev'e lyn, John, 404 n. i 

Excommunication, effects of, 107 

Eylau (i'lou), battle of, 487 

Fa bi'o la, 27 n. i 
'Factory Act, English, 528 n. i 
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 380 
False Decretals, the, 32 n. 2 
Fashoda (fa sho'da) incident, the, 

598 n. 3 
Faure (for), Felix, 522 n. 2 



Faust, printer, 235 

Faustus, legend of, 240 n. i 

Federalism, 61 1 

Fenelon (fan lori'), 367 n. i 

Ferdinand of Aragon, marriage to 
Isabella of Castile, 205 ; sets up 
the Inquisition, 206; his death, 207 

Ferdinand II, Emperor H.R. E., 344 

Ferdinand, Francis, Austrian Crown 
Prince, assassinated, 632, 633 

Feudalism, defined, 75; subinfeuda- 
tion, 75 ; ceremony of homage, 77 ; 
relation of lord and vassal, — reliefs, 
fines, aids, etc., 78 ; manorial serfs, 
79, 80 ; development of the feudal 
system, 81 ; castles of the nobles, 
83 ; sports of the nobles, 83 ; causes 
of decay, 84 ; extinction of, in dif- 
ferent countries, 85n. i; defects 
of the system, 85 ; good results of 
the system, 86-88 ; effects upon, of 
Crusades, 131 

Fich'te, 497 

Field of Cloth of Gold, 2S9 n. i 

Filmer, quoted, 353 n. 2 

Fine arts, revival of the, 237-240 

Finland, Russianization of, 577 ; be- 
comes a republic, 652 

Finns, the, 22 

Fire-worshipers, 51 n. 2 

Plsher, John, bishop of Rochester, 304 

Five Mile Act, 391 

Flag'el lants, the, 188 n. i 

Flodden Field, battle of, 300 n. i 

Florence, sketch of history, 160 

Foch (fosh). Marshal, 657 

Forest laws of the Normans, 100, loi 

For mo'sa, 605 

Era An gel'i co, 240 n. 2 

France, beginnings of French king- 
dom, 196; the Capetian period, 
197-200; table of Capetian kings 
(direct line), 197 n. i ; in the Cru- 
sades, 198; effectsupon, of the Hun- 
dred Years' War, 200 ; under the 
mediaeval Valois, 200-202 ; wars 
with Charles V, 288, 289 ; under the 
later Valois kings, 335-338 ; under 
Henry IV, 338-340 ; under Louis 
XIII, 340-342 ; gains in Treaty of 
Westphalia, 347 ; under Louis XIV, 
358-368 ; Louis XV, 368 ; the Rev- 
olution, 437-475 ; under Louis XVI, 
447-461; the Consulate, 477-481; 
the First Empire, 481-504; the 



68o 



INDEX 



Second Empire, 518-520; the Third 
Republic, 522-524; in the World 
War, 637-639, 644, 668 

Francis II, Emperor H. R. E., makes 
Treaty of Campo Formio, 472 ; as 
Francis I, P^mperor of Austria, 485 

Francis I, king of France, rival of 
Charles V, 288 ; wars with Charles 
V, 289 ; persecution of Waldenses, 
289; II, reign of, 335 

Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 
accession, 556; makes Peace of 
Prague, 561 ; grants reforms to 
Hungary, 567 

Franciscans, order of the, 136-138 

Franco-Prussian War, 520, 562 

Frankfort (Ger. Frankfurt), Treaty of 
(187 1 ), 520, 521; Constituent As- 
sembly at, 557 n. 3 

Franks, the, under the Merovingians, 
9; their conversion, 15; importance 
of conversion, 15 

Frederick I, Barbarossa, E^nperor 
H. R.E., in Third Crusade, 122; 
quarrel with Pope Alexander III, 
134 ; represents German nationality, 
209 

Frederick IV, king of Denmark, 407 

Frederick (III) I, king of Prussia, 
412, 413; II,* the Great, 414-419; 
in partition of Poland, 417 

Frederick William, Great Elector of 
Brandenburg, 412 

Frederick William I, king of Prussia, 
413 ; III, campaign of Jena, 486 ; at 
Tilsit, 48S ; IV, grants Constitution, 
556; plaintiff in Missouri court, 557 

Free Imperial Cities, 211, 212 

French and Indian War. See Servii 
Years'' IVar 

French colonies, at close of nine- 
teenth century, 597-599 

Friedland (fret'lant), battle of, 487 

Froissart (frwa-sar'), 203, 204 

Fusillades (fiis e yad'), 469 

Gabelle (ga bel'), 438 

Ga'len, 170 

Gahleo (gal i le'o), 248 n. i 

Gallipoli (gal lep'6 le), peninsula of, 

643 n. 3 
Ga'ma, Vasco da, 252 
Garibaldi (ga re biil'de), 544 ; in Sicily 

and Naples, 547 
Gas'cons, the, 61 n. i 



Geiseric, king of the Vandals, 9, 30 

Geneva Convention of 1864, 546 n. i 

Gen'o a, 160 

Geography, knowledge of, in fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries, 249-256 

George I, king of England, 422 ; II, 
422; 111,422 

George, Lloyd, 531 

Gerard (zha rar'), Balthasar, 331 

German colonies, 599, 600 

German Confederation, 553-561 

German East Africa, 600 

German Empire, New, formed, 563 ; 
history of, up to World War, 563- 
567 ; becomes a sea power, 623 ; 
seeks alliance with Mexico against 
the United States, 648 ; transformed 
into a republic, 657 n. 2. See IVorlii 
War 

German imperialism, 6i8 

German Southwest Africa, 600 

German tribes. See Teutons 

Germany, conversion of German 
tribes, 14-21 ; beginnings of the 
kingdom of, 208 ; renewal of the 
empire by Otto the Great, 208 ; 
under the Hohenstaufen, 209 ; the 
Electors, 210; the Interregnum, 
210; the Free Imperial Cities, 21 1 ; 
under the Hapsburgs, 212-214; 
humanism in, 265-267 ; reforma- 
tion in, 263-284 ; Thirty Years' 
War in, 343-350; Peace of West- 
phalia, 347 ; effects of Thirty Years' 
War upon, 348-350 ; reorganized 
by Napoleon, 485 ; reorganized by 
Congressof Vienna, 510; Confeder- 
ation, 553-563 ; Customs Union, 
555; Revolution of 1848 in, 556- 
558; North German Confederation, 
561 ; German Empire formed, 563 ; 
the Imperial Constitution, 563-565. 
See Genii an Empire, New 

Ghent, Pacification of, 329 

Ghiberti (ge ber'te). sculptor, 239 n. 3 

Gibbon, the historian, mentioned, 5 

Gibraltar, 365 

Gilds, the, 154 

Giotto (jot'to), 240 n. 2 

Girondins (ji ron'dinz), in Legislative 
Assembly, 456; in Convention, 
460 ; fall and execution of, 462, 465 

Gladstone, William Ewart, his Reform 
Bill of 1884, 530; advocates Irish 
Home Rule, 536; death, 536 



INDEX 



68i 



Godfrey of Bouillon (god'fri boo yon'), 
119; made head of Latin kingdom 
of Jerusalem, 121 

Goethe (ge'te), at Erfurt, 492 ; cos- 
mopolitanism of, 497 n. I , 

Good Hope, Cape of, 250 

Gorizia (g5 ret'se a), captured by 
Italians, 642 n. 4 

Goths. See Ost7vgot/is and Visigolks 

Granada, conquest of, 205 

Grand Alliance, of 16S9, 3^4; of 
1701, 365 

Grand Design of Henry IV, 340 n. i 

Gravelines (grav len'), battle of, 293 
n. I 

Gravelotte (grav lot'), battle of, 520 

Great Britain, the name, 422. See 
England 

Great Fire, the, at London, 391 

Great Moguls, the, 146 

Great Schism, the, 140 

Greece, since 1864, 572 n. i 

Greek Church, the, 31, 32 

Greek Empire. See Eastern Empire 

Greek Independence, War of, 571 n. i 
• Greenland, discovered by the North- 
men, 71 

Grevy (gra ve'), 596 n. 10 

Grotius (gro'shius), Hugo, 254 n. 2, 

349 .. _ 
Guadalquivir (guadalkever'), river, 54 
Guebers (ge'bers). See Fire- 

worshipers 
Guillotine, the, 464 
■ Guiscard (ges kar'), Robert, 97 n. i 
-Guise (giiez), Francis, second duke 

of. 336 
Guizot (ge zo'), 518 
Gunpowder, effects of use in war, 85 
Gustavus I, Vasa, king of Sweden, 

276 ; II, Adolphus, in Thirty Years' 

War, 340, 3j^5, 346 
Gutenberg (goo'ten hero), John, 235 

Habeas Corpus Act, 392 

Hague (hag). Conference, First, 614; 

Second, 614 
Hamburg, 1 55 
Hampden, John, 376 
Hanover, House of, in England, 

422 n. I 
Hanover, Prussia annexes, 561 
-Hanseatic League, 155-157 
-Hapsburg, House of. See Austria, 
House of 



Hardenburg, Prussian minister, 498 

- Hargreaves (har'grevz), 430 
Harold, king of England, 97, 98 
Harun-al-Rashid (ha robn'-al- 

rash"id), caliph, 53 

Hassan (ha'sen), 53 n. i 
-Hastings, battle of, 97 

Hebert (a ber'), 467 

Hegira (he jT'ra or hej'i ra), the, 49 

Heidelberg (hi'del berc), 364 

Helgoland (hel'go lant) ceded to 
Great Britain, 510 n. 2; to New 
German Empire, 510 n. 2; dis- 
mantled, 669 

Heloise (a 16 ez'), pupil of Abelard, 
172 

Helvetic Republic formed, 474 

- Henry I, king of England, ^loi n. 2 ; 

II, 179; III, iSi; VII,at*Bosworth 

Field, 192 
Henry IV, Emperor H.R. E., 107; 

VI, 123, 210 
Henry VII, king of England, reign, 

299; VIII, reign, 300-310 
Henry III, king of France, 338 ; IV, 

marriage, 337 ; reign, 338-340 
Henry of Bourbon, king of Navarre, 

338 
Henry, Prince, the Navigator, 250 
Hep'tar chy, Saxon, 12 
Her'i ot, the, 80 
" Hermits, 22, 23 
Herzegovina (hert se go ve'na), ad- 
ministered by Austria-Hungary, 

574. 629 
Hesse-Cassel (hes'-kas'el) annexed 

to Prussia, 561 
Hesse-Darmstadt (hes'darm'stat), 561 
High Commission Court, 376 n. i 
Hil'de brand. See Pope Gregory VII 
Hindenburg Line, the. 655 ; broken, 

663 

- Hindenburg, Von, 640 n. 2 
Hip poc'ra tes, 170 
Hohenlinden, battle of, 478 

_ Hohenstaufen (h6"en stow'fen), 
House of, Germany under, 209, 210 

"Hohenzollern (ho'en tsol lern), 
House of, in Brandenburg, 412; in 
Prussia, 412 n. i. See Prussia 
Holland, kingdom of, created, 483 ; 
annexed to France, 494. See 
Netherlands 
Holstein (hols'stin), duchy of, 559; 
annexed to Prussia, 561 



682 



INDEX 



-iloly Alliance, 513 

Holy League of 1609, 343 

Holy Office. See hujuisttion 

Holy Roman Empire, name attaches 
to Western Empire, 67 ; relations 
of, to the Papacy, 103-105 ; under 
Henry IV, 107, loS; Concordat of 
Worms, 109; results for Germany 
of the renewal of the imperial 
authority, 20S; election of Charles V, 
286; end of the Empire, 485, 486 

Holy Synod established in Russia, 
406 

Holy Wars. See Crusades 

Homage, ceremony of, 77 
-Home Rule, Irish, 536-538 

Hoorn (horn), count of, 327 

Ho sain',. 53 n. i 

Hos'pi tal ers, order of the, origin 
of, 121 n. I 

Howard, Catherine, 308 

Howard, John, 429 n. 2 

Hubertsburg, Treaty of, 416 

Hudson Bay territory, 421 
--Huguenots (hu'ge nots), in religious 
wars, 335-342 ; struggle with Riche- 
lieu, 341 ; after Revocation of the 
Edict of Nantes, 363 
-Humanism, defined, 22S ; Petrarch, 
first of the humanists, 228-230 
Chrysoloras, Creek teacher, 231 
search for ancient manuscripts, 232 
patrons of the New Learning, 233 
fall of Constantinople gives impulse 
to, 234 ; invention of printing in 
relation to the revival, 234-236; 
humanism in the North, 236 ; effects 
of the classical revival upon vernac- 
ular literatures, 243; in Germany, 
265-267. See A't'itaissaiice 

- Humbert I, king of Italy, 549 n. i 
Hundred Days, the, 501-504 

' Hundred Years' War, 186-191 ; re- 
sults for France, 200 

Hungarians, conversion of, 116 

Hungary, beginnings of, 143 ; under 
Joseph II, 433-436; Revolution 
of 1S48 in, 556 n. I ; in Austro- 
Hungarian monarchy, 567-569 
- Huss, John, 141 n. i, 214 

Hussites, the, 213, 214 

Hutten (hoot'ten), Ulrich von, 267 

Iceland, settled from Norway, 71 

- Iconoclastic controversy, 31, 32 



Iconoclasts, in Netherlands, 326 

Incas, 259 

Independents, English religious party 
(known at first as Separatists), in 
• Civil War, 379 

India, English in, 373, 426, 592-594 ; 
French in, 426 n. i, 427 

Indians, American, origin of name, 
252 

Indulgences, defined, 268 n. i ; his- 
tory of, 268, 269 ; granting of, by 
Tetzel, 269 ; Luther's theses on, 
271 

Industrial Revolution in England, 

429-43' 
Industrialism, the New, 579-583 
Inquisition, the, in Languedoc, 129; 

in Spain, 206; procedure of, 280; 

in Netherlands, 325 n. i 
Instrument of Government (l'",nglish), 

38s 

Interdict, effects of, 107 

Interregnum, the, in German history, 
210 

Investiture, contest respecting, 107- 
109 

lona (I n'na or e n'na), monastery 
of, 17 

Ionian Islands, annexed to France, 
472 ; ceded to Greece by England, 
572 n. I 

Ireland, conversion of, 17; under 
'James I, 373; Cromwell in, 383; 
William III in, 398; legislative 
independence, 428; disestablish- 
ment of Church in, 533 ; the Union, 
535; in nineteenth century and 
after, 535-539 

Irene (i re'ne or I ren'). Eastern 
empress, 62 

Ire'ton, 390 

Iron Crown of Lombards, 11, 61,483 

" Ironsides," Cromwell's, 379 

Isabella, queen of Castile, marriage 
to Ferdinand of Aragon, 205; sets 
up the Inquisition, 206; death, 207 

Islam. See MoItanimeJaiiism 

Italian city-republics, general account 
of, 1 57-161 ; causes of their early 
growth, 157; dissensions among, 
157 ; despots in, 157 ; Venice, 158- 
160; Genoa, 160; Florence, 160 

Italian colonies, 598 n. i 

Italian Renaissance. See Kcnais- 
sance 



INDEX 



683 



Italy, results of Lombard conquest, 
II ; recovery of, by Justinian, 43; 
Renaissance in, 219; invaded by 
Charles VIII, 201 ; at Congress of 
Vienna, 510, 540; since Congress 
of Vienna, 540-552; kingdom of, 
formed, 546, 547 ; relations of king- 
dom of, with Papacy, 550; Italia 
irredenta, 642 ; enters the World 
War, 642 ; acquires Trieste and the 
Trentino, 670 n. i . See Italian city- 
republics and Renaissance 

Ivan (e van') IV, the Terrible, 400 n. i 

- Jacobin Club, origin, 455 ; closed, 469 

Jacobites support James II, 398 
.James I, king of England, reign, 
370-374; II, reign, 393, 394; attempt 
to recover throne, 398 

Jamestown, 372 

Jan'i za ries, the, 148 
_Japan, awakening of, 604 ; war with 
China, 604; war with Russia, 606- 
608 

Java, Dutch possession, 594 n. i 

7effreys, Chief Justice, 393 n. i 

Jena (ya'nii), battle of, 486 

Jenghiz Khan (jen'gis khan), 144 

Jerome of Prague, 214 

Jerusalem, captured by crusaders, 
120; Latin Kingdom of, 120; cap- 
tured by Saladin, 122 ; captured by 
the British (1917), 653 

Jesuits, Society of the, 281 ; expelled 

from various countries, 435 n. i 
-Jews, expelled from Spain, 206 ; polit- 
ical disabilities removed in Eng- 
land, 533 
.Joan of Arc, 190 
-Joffre (zhofr). Marshal, 637 

John, king of England, quarrel with 
Pope Innocent III, 135; becomes 
vassal of the papal see, 136; for- 
feits lands in France, 180; grants 
Magna Carta, 180 

John of Austria, Don, at Lepanto, 294 

John of Leyden, 207 n. 2 

John Sobieski, king of Poland, 362 
-Joseph II, Emperor H. R. E., 433-436 

Joseph Bonaparte, king of Spain, 491 

Josephine, Empress, 494 n. i 

Jourdan (zhoordoh'), campaign of 

1796,471,472 
_ Juan Ponce de Leon (pon tha da la on'), 
258 n. 1 



Jugoslavia (yoo'go slav"i a), 670 n. i 
-Justinian, his reign, 43-45; his code, 

44 
Jutes, the, 12 
Jutland, naval battle of, 644 n. i 

Kaaba (ka'ba), the, 47 
Kant (kant), Immanuel, quoted, 612 
Ker man', 51 n. 2 
Khedive (kedev'), 596 
Kiel (kel) Canal, the, 624 n. i 
Knighthood. See Ckivahy 
■ Knox, John, 317 
Koniggratz (ke'nich grets), battle of, 

560 
Konigsberg (ke'nichs berG), 128 
Ko'ran, the, origin of, 50 ; contents 

of, 50 
Ko re'a, 604, 605 
Koreish (ko rish'), Arab clan, 48 
Kosciuszko (kos i us'ko), 41 1 
Kossuth (kosh'oot), Louis, 556 n. i 
Kremlin, the, 499 
Kriig'er, Paul, 595 
Kublai Khan (kobb'lT khan), 146 
Kultur (kool toor'), 621 n. i 
Ku ro pat'kin, Russian general, 607 
Kut-el-Amara (koot-el-a ma'ra), 553 

n-3 

'Labor Problem, the, 582 

La Bruyere (la brii yer'), 367 n. i^ 

Lafayette (la fa yet'), 451 

Lancaster, House of, 177 n. i. See 
Roses, Wars of the 

Langland, William, 194 

Langton, Stephen, 136 

Languedoc (lang'gwe dok), 129 

Langiie cVOc (larig'dok"), French 
dialect, 202 

Langtie if Oil (laiig'dwel"), French 
dialect, 202 

Lapps, the, 22 
-La Kochelle (la r5 shel'). Huguenot 
stronghold, 339; siege of, 341 

Las Ca'sas, 260 n. i 

Latimer, bishop, 312 

Latin Empire of Constantinople, 124 

Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, founded, 
120 ; end of, 127 

Laud, William, 375 
. I-eague of Nations, preparations for, 
612; covenant of, 667; first meet- 
ing of Council of the League, 670 

Leicester (les'ter) Abbey, 302 



684 



INDEX 



Leipzig (llp'tsic), battle of (1813), 501 
Lemberg (lem'berG), taken by the 

Russians, 640 n. 2 
- Lenine (len'in), 653 
Leo the Isaurian, 32 
-Leonardo da Vinci (la o niir'do da 

vTn'che), 239 
Leopold I, king of the Belgians, 51S ; 

II, 5S8 n. 2 
Leopold of Hohenzollern offered 

Spanish crown, 562 
Le pan'to, battle of, 294 
Les'seps, Ferdinand de, 523 
Lessing, 497 n. i 

Leltrcs de cachet (let'r de ka sha"), 438 
Leuthen (loi'ten), battle of, 416 
Lew'es, battle of, 182 
Lewis I, the Pious, king of the 

Franks, 66 
Libraries, founding of, 233 
Liege (Ig azh'), siege of (1914), 636 
" Light Brigade," the, 573 
Ligurian Republic, formed, 472 ; 

annexed to France, 483 
Lisbon, captured by crusaders, 128 
Literature, F^nglish, Old English pe- 
riod, 19, 20; later mediaeval period, 

193-196; under Henry VIII, 309; 

under Elizabeth, 322 ; of the Puritan 

period, 389 ; of the Restoration, 395 
Literature, French, beginnings of, 

202-204 ; under Louis XIV, 367 ; 

in eighteenth century, 442-445 
Literature, German, beginnings of, 

214, 215 
Literature, Spanish, beginnings of, 207 
Literatures, vernacular, beginnings 

of, 224; development fostered by 

classical revival, 243 
Livingstone, P)avid, 587 
Llewellyn (loo el'in) III, Welsh 

prince, 183 
Local Government Act, England, 530 
Locke, John, 442 n. 2 
Lol'lards, the, 195 

Lombards, kingdom of the, 10; de- 
stroyed by Charles the Great, 61 
Lombardy, ceded to Austria, 510 ; to 

Sardinia, 546 
Loom, power, invented, 430 
Lords, House of (English), veto 

power abolished, 530 
Lorraine (16 ran'), part of, ceded to 

German Empire, 520, 521 ; restored 

to France, 668 



Lo thair'. Emperor H. R. E., 66 

Loubet (loo ba'), 522 n. 2 

Louis I, Prince of Conde (koh da'), 
336 

Louis VII, king of France, 122 ; IX, 
126 n. I ; XI, 200; XIII, 340; XIV, 
reign, 358-368; XV, reign, 368; 
death, 446; XVI, 447, 455, 460; 
XVII (dauphin), 464 n. i ; XVIII, 
accession, 501 ; reign, 502, 516 

Louis Bonaparte, king of Holland, 
483 ; abdication of, 494 
"Louis Napoleon Bonaparte. See 

iVapoleoi! HI 
«Louis Philippe, king of the French, 
517,5'S 

Louisa, queen of Prussia, 4S8 

Louisiana, ceded to France, 484; to 
United States, 484 
_,Louvain (loo van'), university and li- 
brary of, destroyed, 636 

Low countries. See A'^ethei-lands, 
Bels^iiim 

L6 yo'la, Ignatius of, 28 1 

Lii'beck, 155 

Lucerne, Lion of, 458 n. 2 

Luneville (hi navel'). Peace of, 478 
-Luther, Martin, his pilgrimage to 
Rome, 270 ; his ninety-five theses, 
27 1 ; his address to the Christian no- 
bility of the German nation, 271 ; 
burns the papal bull, 272 ; at the 
Diet of Worms, 273 ; at the Wart- 
burg, 274; his death, 276 n. 2 

Lutherans, 277 

Lutter (lobt'ter), battle of, 344 n. i 

Liitzen (liit'sen), battle of (1632), 346 ; 

(1813). 501 
Lusitaii/a, sinking of the, 641 
Luxemburg (liik'sem berg) occupied 

by German troops, 636 

Machiavelli (mak e a vel'le), Nicholas, 
219; his Prince, 219 

Madagascar, French in, 598 

Magdeburg (mag'de boorr,), sack of, 
by Tilly, 345 

Magellan, Ferdinand, his circum- 
navigation of the globe, 254-256; 
results of the achievement, 255 

Ma gen'ta, battle of, 546 

Magna Carta, 181 

Magyars (mod'yorz). See Hungary 

Mainz (mints), 235 

Mam'e luke, 473 



INDEX 



685 



Man chu'ri a, Chinese province, oc- 
cupied by Russia, 607 

Manuscripts, search for, by human- 
ists, 232 

Marat (ma ra'), 4^3 

Marco Po'lo, mentioned, 132; at 
Mongol court, 146 

Ma ren'go, battle of, 478 

Margaret of Denmark, 221 

Margaret, Duchess of Parma, 325, 326 

Margaret of Valois, 337 

Maria Theresa, queen of Hungary, 
in partition of Poland, 410 ; in War 
of Austrian Succession, 415; in 
Seven Years' War, 415 

Marie Antoinette (mar'i antoinet'), 
marriage, 447 ; death, 464 

Marie Louise of Austria, 494 

Marienburg (ma re'en boorc), 128 

Marlborough, Duke of, 365 n. 2 

Marne (marn), first battle of the, 

637 
Marseillais (marseya'), the six hun- 
dred, 458 
Marseillaise (mar se yaz'), the, 4 58 n. i 
Marseilles (mar-salz'), 126 
Marston Moor, battle of, 379 n. i 
Mary I, queen of England, reign, 312; 

II, 396 
Mary Stuart, queen of Scots, 316, 317 
Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, 108 
Matthias (ma thl'as). Emperor H.R.E., 

343 
Maurice, stadtholder, 331 
Max i mil'ian I, Emperor H.R.E., 214 
Mayors of the Palace, 10 
Maz'a rin, French minister, 359 
Mazurian Lakes, battle of the, 640 n. 2 
Mazzini (mat se'ne), Joseph, 542 
Mec'ca, 47 
Medici (med'e che), Cos'i mo de', 161 

n. I ; Lorenzo de', 161 n. i 
Medina (me de'na), 49 
Melanchthon (me langk'thon), 276 

n. 2 
Mendicant friars. See Dominicans 

and Franciscans 
Menelik, king of Abyssinia, 598 n. i 
.Merovingians, Franks under the, 9, 10 
Mer'o wig, 10 n. i 
Messina (mes se'na), destroyed by 

earthquake, 552 n. i 
Methodists, rise of. 423-425 ; demand 

religious equality, 532 
Metric system, 465 



•; Met'ter nich. Prince, at Congress of 
Vienna, 512; influence in Germany, 
555 ; overthrow of, 556 

- Metz, ceded to France, 347 ; siege 

of, 520 

- Meuse (muz), river, 66, 661 
Mexico, conquest by Spain, 257-259 
Michael Angelo, 240 

- Mi Ian' Decree, 489 

Military and Religious Orders. See 
Hospitalers and Templars 

Milton, John, 389 

Min"ne sing'ers, 215 

Mir, the Russian, 575 n. i 

Mirabeau (me ra bo'), 450, 451 

Missolonghi (mis so long'ge), 571 n i. 

Mittel-Enropa, Pan-Germanists' plan 
of, 622 ■ 

Mo'de na, restoration in, 540 ; union 
with Sardinia, 547 

Mohammed, 4S-51 

Mohammed II, sultan of the Otto- 
mans, 148, 149 

Mohammedanism, rise of, 47-57 ; 
doctrines, 50 ; under earlier ca- 
liphs, 51-54; its law system, 54; 
polygamy under, 57 n. i ; slavery, 

57 

Mol da'vi a, 574 n. 2 

Moliere (mo Iyer'), 367 

Mo luc'cas, the, 254 

Monasteries, suppression of, in Eng- 
land, 304-306 

Monasticism, defined, 22 ; its origin, 
23 ; in the West, 24 ; the Benedic- 
tine monks, 25 ; monastic reform, 
26; services, rendered by, to civili- 
zation, 26, 27 

Mongols, general account of their 
conquests, 144-148; their invasion 
of Russia, 145, 147 

Monk, George, English general, 387 

Monks. See Monaslicisin 

Montcalm (mont kam'). General, 426 

Monte Cassino (mon'ta kiis se'nn), 
monastery, 25 

Montenegro (mon te na'gro), 643 

Montesquieu (mon tes kye'), 443 

Montezuma (mon te zoo'ma), 258 

Montfort (mon for'). Simon de. leader 
of the Albigensian crusade, 129 

Moore, Sir John, 493 n. i 

Moors, the, 205 
' More, Sir Thomas, 304 ; his Utopia, 
309 



686 



INDEX 



Moreau (mo ro') in campaign of 1796, 

471. 472 

Mor gar'ten, battle of, 212 n. 2 

Moriscos, the, 20s; under Charles V, 
294; under Philip II, 294; expul- 
sion of, 295, 296 

Morocco, becomes a French protecto- 
rate, 59S ; the first Moroccan crisis 
(1905), 625 ; the second crisis 
(1911), 630 

Morton, Cardinal, 299 

Moscow (mos'ko or mos'kow), Napo- 
leon in, 499, 500 

Mountainists, the, 459 

Mukden (mook den'), battle of, (J07 n. i 

Municipal Reform Act, 528 

Miin'ster, Anabaptists at, 275 n. 2 

Murat (mil rri'), Joachim, 491 

Mus'co vy, 216 

Niifels (na'fels), battle of, 212 n. 2 

Nii'na Sa'hib, 593 n. i 
-Nantes (nants ; Fr. pron. noiit). Indict 
of, 339 ; revocation of, 362 

Naples, kingdom of, founded by 
Normans, 97 n. 1 ; laid claim to, by 
Charles VIII, 201 ; becomes part 
of the kingdom of Italy, 547, 54S 

Napoleon I, Bonaparte, guards Con- 
vention, 470; campaign in Italy, 
471 ; campaign in Egypt, 473 ; over- 
throws Directory, 474 ; First Con- 
sul, 477-4S1 ; Emperor, 4,Si-504; 
at Elba, 501 ; the Hundred Days, 
501-504; at St. Helena, 504; II. 
(King of Rome), born, 294; pro- 
claimed, 503 n. 2; III, reign, 51S- 
520 ; aids Sardinia, 545 ; in Franco- 
Prussian War, 520, 562 

Nar'vii, battle of, 407 

Naseby (naz'bi), battle of, ^So 

Nassau, German state, 326 n. i 

Nji taP, 595 

National Guards, French orcjanized, 
452 

Nationality, principal of, 506, 507 

Navarino (nii vii re'nu), battle of, 
571 n. I 

Navarre, king of. See Antony of 
Boio-bon, Ilciny IV 

Neck'er, French minister, 447 

Nelson, Admiral, at Abukir Bay, 473; 
at Trafalgar, 486 

Netherlands, the, the country, 324 ; 
under Charles V, 325 ; under Philip 



II, 325; War of Independence, 
326-333 ; submission of Catholic 
provinces (see Belgium), 329; in- 
dependent union of seven Protes- 
tant provinces, 329 ; their Declara- 
tion of Independence, 330 ; Truce 
of 1609 with, 331 ; independent of 
Holy Roman Empire, 347 ; wars 
with Louis XIV, 361 ; annexed to 
France, 494 ; kingdom of, formed, 

509 
Netherlands, Austrian, Catholic, 

Spanish. See Belgium 
Netherlands, Protestant, United. See 

Xctherlainls 
Newfoundland, 590 n. 2 
New France. See Canada 
New Learning. See IIuma)iistn 
" New Model " army formed, 380 
New South Wales, 591 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 442 n. 2 
New Zealand, 591 n. 2; in the World 

War, 643, 662 
Ney (na). Marshal, S02 
Nibelungenlicd (ne'bel ung'en let'), 

214 
Ni ^ae'a. Church Council of, 15 
Nice (nes), ceded to France, 547 
-Nicholas I, Tsar, 571; II, 577; calls 

the First Hague I'eace Conference, 

614; his abdication, 649; his death, 

650 
Nicholas, Grand Duke, 644 n. 2 
Niemen (nc'men), river, 487 
Nihilists, 576 
Nimeguen (nim'a gen). Treaty of, 

361 n. I 
Nn'gi, Japanese general, 607 n. i 
" No Man's Land," 639 
Norman C/onquest of England, 96- 

102 ; political and social results for 

England, loi, 102; effects upon 

P2nglish language and literature, 

•93 
Normandy, in P"rench history, 73 
Normans, in Italy and Sicily, 97 n. i ; 
in England, 96-102 ; as crusaders, 
115. See yA (';-/// W(V/ 
North German Confederation, 561 
Northern countries, the. See Scan- 
dinavians and Cal»iai; Vnio)i of 
Northmen, 69-74. See Scandinavians 
Northwest Passage, the, 321 n. i 
Norway, 583. See Cabnai\ Union of 
Notables, Assembly of, 447 



INDEX 



687 



Notre Dame (no'tr dam), Paris, 

worship of Reason in, 466 
No va'ra, battle of, 624 
Nova Scotia ceded to England, 365 
Nov'go rod, 156 
A^oyades (nwa yad') 469 
Nystad (nii'stad), Peace of, 40S 

Gates (ots), Titus, 392 

Ocean Epoch, 257 n. i 

O'Connell, Daniel, 536 

Odoacer, 7 

Oktai (ok'tl), Mongol conqueror, 145 

Old Sa'rum, 527 

O'mar, caliph, 51 n. i 

Ommiads (6 mi'adz), 53 n. i 

Opium War, 592 

Orange Free State, 595 

Orange River Colony, 595 

Orangemen, 398 

Ordeals, among the Teutons, 30-40 

Orellana (o ral yii'nii), Francisco de, 
258 n. I 

Or'le ans (Fr. pron. or la on'), relief 
of, by Joan of Arc, 191 

Ojrleans, Philippe, Duke of, regent, 
368 

Osnabriick, 347 n. i 

Ostend (os tend'), 63S 

Ostrogoths, kingdom of the, 7 ; de- 
stroyed by generals of Justinian, 8 

Oswy, king of Northumbria, 18 

Oth man', caliph, 51 n. i 

Othman I, Ottoman prince, 148 n. i 

O tran'tS, 120 

Otto I, the Great, restores the Em- 
pire, 67 

Ottomans. See Turks 

Oxenstiern (oks'en stern), 346 

O yii'ma. Field Marshal, 607 

Paine, Thomas, 459 
■Palatinate, "War of the, 363 ; devasta- 
tion of, 364 

Pal'imp sests, 233 n. i 

Pamirs (pii merz'), 601 

Pan a mii' Canal, 523 

Papacy, origin of its temporal au- 
thority, 60 ; claims of primacy by 
the Roman bishops, 28; circum- 
stances that favored growth, 28-33; 
Concordat of Worms, loS ; re- 
lations of, to the H. R. E., 103-109 ; 
under Gregory VII, 105-108; 
under Alexander III, 134, 135; 



under Innocent III, 135; under 
Boniface VIII, 138; removal of 
papal seat to Avignon, 139; the 
Great Schism, 140; reforming 
Church Councils, 140, 141 ; is still 
a spiritual theocracy, 141 ; end of 
temporal power of, 549 ; relations 
with Italian government, 550; in- 
fallibility of, 550 n. I. See Popes 

Papal States, annexed to France, 
493; annexation to kingdom of 
Italy, 549. See Papacy 

Paraphrase of the Scriptures, 20 

Paris, Peace of (1763), 427; {1783), 
428; (1814), 502 n. i; (1815), 503 
n. 3; (1856), 573 

Paris, siege of (1870), 520 

Parliament, English, creation of 
House of Commons, 181-183; 
Model Parliament, 182 n. i ; effects 
upon, of Hundred Years' War, 191 ; 
the Long Parliament, 378 ; the 
Little Parliament, 385; Convention, 
394 ; union of English and Scotch 
Parliaments, 421 

Parr, Catherine, 308 

Par'sees, the. See Fire-u'orshipei's 

Pa7-sifal (par'se fal), poem of, 215 

Par"the no pe'an Republic, 474 

Pascal, 367 n. i 

Passchendaele (piis ken dii'lc) Ridge, 
663 

Patriarch, Russian, office abolished, 
406 

Patricius (pa trish'ius). See St. Patrick 

Pax Rom ait a, I 13 

Peace Conference at The Hague, 
First, 614 ; Second, 614 

Peace Convention at Paris (1919), 
666-670 

Peace of God, 114 

Peasants' Revolt in England, 188, 
189 

Peasants' War, 274 

Pe king', siege of embassies at, 605 

Peninsula Wars, 490, 491 

Perry, Commodore, 604 

Pershing, General, 652, 655, 657 

Persia, conquest of, by Saracens, 51 

Peru, Spanish conquest of, 259, 260; 
Spanish oppression of natives in, 
260 n. I 

Pestilence, the Great. See Black Death 

Peter I, the Great, Tsar, 400-409 ; 
III, 416 



688 



INDEX 



Peter the Hermit, legend of, 117; 

heads an expedition, 120 n. i 
Peter of Lombard, Schoolman, 173 

n. I 
Petition of Right, 374, 375 
Petrarca (pa trjir'ka), Francesco. See 

Petrarch 
Petrarch, as a humanist, 22S-231 ; 

his feeling for the ruins of Rome, 

230 ; his ascent of Mount Ventoux 

231 n. I 

Petrograd (pye tro grat'), 407 

Philip II, king of Spain, reign, 292- 
295; III, expels Moriscos, 295,296 

Philip II, Augustus, king of France, 
in Third Crusade, 122 ; his quarrel 
with Pope Innocent III, 135 ; seizes 
English possessions in France, 
198; IV, the Fair, his quarrel with 
Pope Boniface VIII, 138; sum- 
mons the commons to the National 
Assembly, 19S, 199; destroys the 
order of the Templars, 199 

Philippines discovered, 255 

Philosophy, French, in eighteenth 
century, 442-446 

Piacenza (pea chen'tsa), Church Coun- 
cil at, 118 

Piave (pe a'va), 653 

Piedmont. See Sardinia 

Pilgrim Fathers, 316 

Pilgrimage of Grace, 305 n. i 

Pilgrimages, 1 1 1 

Pippin III, king of the Franks, 59 

Pisa (pe'za), 160 n. i ; Church Coun- 
cil of, 140 

Pitt, William, Earl' of Chatham, 426 

Pi zar'ro, Francisco, 259 

Plan tag'e net. House of, 177 n. i 

Plassey, battle of, 426 

Plev'na, siege of, 574 

Poison gas, first use of, by the Ger- 
mans, 662 

Poitiers (pwa tya'), battle of (1356), 
188 n. 2 

Poland, receives religion from Rome, 
21 n. I ; partitions of, 410; under 
Napoleon, 488 ; Russian kingdom 
of, 509 ; revolt in, 517 n. I 

Poltava (pol ta'vii), battle of, 408 

Pom e ra'ni a. Western, ceded to 
Sweden, 347 ; Eastern, ceded to 
Brandenburg, 347 

Pompadour (poh pa door'), Madame 
de, 368 



Pondicherry (pon di sher'i), captured 
by English and restored, 427 n. i 

Popes : Gregory I, 16, 30 n. 3 ; Leo I, 
the Great, 28, 29; Nicholas I, 28; 
Stephen II, 60; Leo III, 62; 
Gregory VII, io5-i^O,Urban II, 
1 17-1 19; Innocentlll, 135; Alexan- 
der III, 134; Boniface VIII. 13S; 
Martin V, 141; Nicholas V, 233; 
Julius II, 233; Leo X, 233, 269; 
Alexander VI, 253; Clement VII, 
302 ; Gregory XIII, 338 ; Sixtus V, 
318 ; Pius VII, at Napoleon's coro- 
nation, 482 ; prisoner, 493 ; Pius 
IX, 550 n. 3; Leo XIII, 550 n. 3 ; 
Pius X, 550 n. 3; Benedict XV, 
550 n- 3. 55' • See Papacy 

Popish Plot, the, 391 

Popular sovereignty, principle of, 

505 

Port Arthur, ceded to Japan, 605 ; 
leased to Russia, 607 ; siege of, 607 

Portugal, kingdom of, its beginnings, 
128 

Portuguese colonies, early explora- 
tions, 250; in India, 253; in Brazil, 
253 n. 2 

Posen (po'zen), given to the new 
Poland, 668 

Potato introduced into Europe, 321 

Pragmatic Sanction, 415 

Prague (prag), Treaty of (1S66), 561 

Prayer, Book of Common, 311 

Pride's Purge, 381 

Prime Minister, origin of, in Eng- 
land, 422, 423 

Prince, the, by Machiavelli, 219 

Printing, invention of, 234-236; in 
China, 235 

Privileges, abolition of, in France, 453 

Protectorate in England, 385-387 

Protestant Netherlands, War of the, 
361 

Protestant Revolution defined, 263. 
See Reformation 

Protestants, origin of name, 276 ; 
divisions among, 277 

Protestation, the Great, 372 

Proven9al (pro'vaii'sal") speech, 202 

Provence (pro'vons"), 201 

Prussia, foundations of, laid by 
Teutonic Knights, 128, 129; under 
the Great Elector, 412 ; becomes a 
kingdom, 412,413; in eighteenth 
century, 412-419 ; war with French 



INDEX 



689 



Revolution, 457; warwith Napoleon, 
4S6; regeneration of, 497-499; 
gains at Congress of Vienna, 510; 
in Holy Alliance, 513 ; in Germanic 
Confederation, 510, 553; in Cus- 
toms Union, 555 ; Revolution of 
1848 in, 556-558; war with Den- 
mark, 559; with Austria, 560; with 
France, 520, 521, 562-563; forms 
North German Confederation, 561 ; 
head of new German Empire, 
562-567 

Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, 32 n. 2 

Purgatory, 268 

Puritans, under Elizabeth, 315; rule 
of, 382-390; customs of, 3S8 

Pym, John, 378 

Pyramids, battle of the, 473 

Quebec, battle of, 426 
Quir'i nal, the, 550 n. 2 
Quito (ke'to), 260 

Racine (ra sen'), 367 

Raleigh (ra'li). Sir Walter, 321, 337 

Raphael (raf'a el), 240 

Rastadt, Treaty of, 365 

Ravaillac (rii vji yak'), 340 

Raymond IV, count of Toulouse, 1 19 ; 
VI, 129; VII, 129 

Reason, worship of, 466 

Red Cross Society, founding of, 546 
n.i ; in World War, 661, 662 n. i 

Reform Bill, English, of 1832, 527; 
of 1867, 529; of 1884, 529 

■Reformation, defined, 263 ; causes of, 
263-265 ; precursors of, 265-267 ; 
question of indulgences, 268 ; 
Luther, 270-274 ; reaction from, 
276-282 ; results of, 283, 284. See 
Contents 

Reichstag (richs'tag), 564 

Renaissance {xe na'saiis" : the italic e 
here has the obscure sound of e in 
" novel"), the, defined, 223; causes 
and antecedents, 223-226; the 
revival in Italy, 227-246; human- 
ism, 228; the artistic revival, 237- 
240; general effects, 241-246; re- 
lation to religious reform, 245. 
See Hiimanisin 

Restoration, English, 387 ; French, 
501, 516 

Reuchlin (roich len' or roich'lTn), 
humanist, 237, 266, 267 



Revenue of English crown settled, 

. 397 

Revival of Learning. See Renaissance 

Revolution, Protestant, 263 ; Puritan, 
382-390; of 1688, 393; American, 
427; Industrial, 429-431; French, 
of 1789, 437-475; of July, 1830, 
517; of February, 1848, 518; Bel- 
gian, of 1830, 518; Italian, of 
1820, 541; of 1830, 542; of 1848, 
543 ; German, of 1830, 555 ; of 1848, 
556-558; Russian, of 1917, 649 

Revolutionary Tribunal, French, es- 
tablished, 461 ; work of, 468 

Rheims (remz), the Dauphin Charles 
crowned at, as Charles VII, 191 ; 
the cathedral (plate), 654 

Rhodes, Cecil, 596 

Richard I, king of England, 122, 123; 
III, 192 

Richelieu (resh lye'), Cardinal, 340-342 

Ridley, 312 

Rienzi (re en'ze), tribune of Rome, 
217-219 

Rights, English Bill of, 396 

Rimini (re'me ne), 62 

River Epoch, 256 

Robert the Magnificent, Duke of 
Normandy, 1 19 

Robespierre (ro bes pyer'), in Con- 
stituent Assembly, 451 ; in Con- 
vention, 459, 467 ; death, 469 

Rois faineants (rwa fa na oh'), 10 

Rojestvensky(rozhest'venski),6o7n.2 

Roland (ro Ion'), Madame, 467 

Ro'land, paladin, 61 n. i 

Rollo, Scandinavian chief, 73 

Romagna (ro man'yii), the, united 
with the Sardinian kingdom, 547 

Roman Empire, restored in the West, 
by Charlemagne, 62 ; renewed by 
Otto the Great, 67. See Eastern 
Empire and Holy Roman Empire 

Roman law, revival of, 41 ; Justinian 
Code, 43, 44 

Roman Republic, 474 

Romance languages, 36 

Romance nations, 35 

Ro ma'noff, House of, 400 

Rome, relation of the fall of, to world 
history, 3 ; its bequest to civiliza- 
tion, 4 ; capital of Italy, 548, 549 

Roncesvalles (ron se val'les ; Sp. ron- 
thes val'yes). Pass of, 61 n. i 

Roses, Wars of'the, 192 



690 



INDEX 



Ross'bjich, battle of, 416 

Rouen (roo on'), 73 

Rouget de Lisle (rob zha' de lei), 
458 n. I 

Roundheads, 379 

Rousseau (roo so'), 444 

Rumania or Roumania (rob ma'ni a), 
574 n. 2 ; in the World War, 645 

Rumelia or Roumelia (rob me'li a). 
Eastern, 574 n. 2 

Runnymede (riin'i med), iSo 

Ru'rik, Scandinavian chief, 71 

Russia, introduction of Christianity 
into, 21 ; receives elements of 
civilization from Constantinople, 
46; the Mongol invasion, 216; rise 
of Muscovy, 216; freed from the 
Mongols, 216; under Ivan the 
Terrible, 400 n. i ; under Peter 
the Great,400-409; under Catherine 
the Great, 409-411; war with 
Napoleon, 499 ; from French Revo- 
lution to the World War, 571-57S; 
in the World War, 640, 644 n. i, 
649, 652 ; Asiatic expansion of, 607 

Russo-lapanese War, 578, 606 

Russo-Turkish War, of 182S-1S29, 
571 ; of 1877-1878. 573-575 

Rys'wick, Treaty of, 364 

Saar (zar) basin, mines of, given to 

France, 668 
Sadowa (sa'do vii), battle of, 560 
St. Anthony, 24 
St. Bartholomew's Day, massacre of, 

337 
St. Benedict, 25 
St. Ber'nard, preaches crusade, 122; 

controversy with Abclard, 172 
St. Boniface (bon'e fass). See H'ni- 

frid 
St. Co lum'ba, 17 
St. Dom'i nic, 136, 137 
St. Francis, 136, 137 
St. Gall, monastery of, iS n. i 
St. Germain (san' zher'mah'). Treaty 

of (1919), 670 n. I 
St. Helena, 504 

St. John, Knights of. See Hospitalers 
St. Louis, 126 n. I 
St. Mihiel (sah me yel') salient, 660 
St. Patrick, 17 

St. Paul's Cathedral, London, 391 n. i 
St. Peter, 28 
St. Peter's, Rome, 269 



St. Petersburg founded, 407 

St. Quentin (sah' koh'tan), battle of, 
293 n. I 

St. Sim'e on Sty li'tes, 24 

St. Wil'frid, 18 

Sal'a din, 122, 123 

Sa ler'no, 108 

Salisbury, Gemot of, 98 

Saloniki (sa 16 ne'ke), 643 n. i 

San Marino (ma re'no), 540 

San Stef'ii no. Treaty of, 574 n. i 

Sans Souci (son sob se'), 418 

Saracens, name, 47 ; their conquests, 
51-53; their civilization, 54-57. 
See Arabs and RIcors 

Sarajevo (sa ra ya'vo), 633 n. i 

Sardinia, kingdom of, revolution of 
1820 in, 541 ; revolution of 1848 in, 
543 ; in Crimean War, 544 ; war 
with Austria, 546; annexations of 
territory, 547, 548; becomes king- 
dom of Italy, 547 

vSa vo na ro'la, Girolamo (je ro'la mo), 
220 

Savoy ceded to France, 547 

Saxons, continental, subjugated by 
Charlemagne, 61. See A)i,^lo-Saxons 

Saxony, becomes a kingdom, 4S8 n. 2 ; 
part ceded to Prussia, 510 

Scandinavians, conversion of, 21 ; 
as pirates and colonizers, 69; col- 
onization of Iceland and Green- 
land, 71 ; discovery of America by, 
71 ; saga literature of Iceland, 71 ; 
in Russia, 71 ; Danes in England, 
71-73 ; Northmen in Gaul, 73; trans- 
formation of, 73 ; Norse factor in 
French history, 73. See Calmar, 
Uiiioi of 

Scharn'horst, 498 

Schleswig (shlas'vic) or Sleswick, 
duchy of, 559; annexed to Prussia, 
561 ; part of, subject of a plebiscite, 
668 

Schleswig-Holstein War, 559 

Schmalkaldic League, 290 

Scholasticism in conflict with hu- 
manism, 265-267. See Schoolmen 

Schoolmen, nature of their task, 171 ; 
Abelard, 171; the Schoolmen of 
the thirteenth century, 172 ; Albert 
the Great, 173; Thomas Aquinas, 
173 ; Roger Bacon, 173 ; last of the 
Schoolmen, 174; their services to 
intellectual progress, 174, 175 



INDEX 



691 



Schwyz (shvlts or shvTts), 212 
Scone (skoon), Stone of, 184, 185 
Scotland, wars with England, 1S4- 

186; union of Scottish and Eng- 
lish crowns, 186, 370; union of 

their parliaments, 421 
Scriptorium, 27 

Scutage (sku'taj) defined, 181 n. i 
Sea Epoch, 256, 257 
Secularization, of Church property, 

275 ; in France, 454 
Sedan (se doii'), capitulation of, in 

Franco-Prussian War, 520 
Seeley, Professor J. R., quoted, 610 
Seine (san), river, 73 
Self-denying ordinance, 3S0 
Sempach (sem'pak), battle of, 2 1 2 n. 2 
Sen e gal', 598 
Separatists, 316 
Sepoy Mutiny, 593 n. i 
Sepoys, 426 n. 2 
Serbia, independence of, 574 n. 2 ; its 

relations to Austria-Hungary, 627 ; 

in the World War, 643 
Serfs, under feudal system, 79, 80 ; 

Russia emancipates, 575-576 
Ser ve'tus, 280 
Se vas'to pol, siege of, 573 
Seven bishops, trial of the, 593 
Seven Weeks' War, 560 
Seven Years' War, 415, 416 
Sevigne (savenya'), Madame de, 

367 n. I 
Seville (sev'il), 52 
Seymour, Jane, 307 
Shakespeare, 323 

Shiahs (she'az), Moslem sect, 53 n. i 
Ship money, 376 
Siberia, Russia in, 602 
Sicilian Vespers, 210 n. i 
Sicily, kingdom of. See A'aples^ ^-''f'g- 

dom of 
Siegfried (seg'fred), 215 
Sieyes (se a yas'), 451 
Si le'si a, seized by Frederick the 

Great, 415; part of, given to the 

new Poland, 668 
Silk industry introduced into Europe, 

44 
Sim'o ny, 105-107 
Siraj-ud-Daula (se raj'-ood-dow'la), 426 

n-3 
Slave trade, African, beginning of 
the, 250; the Assiento, 421 ; Eng- 
land abolishes, 428 



Slavery abolished in English col- 
onies, 528 n. I 

Slaves, number in Middle Ages, 79 
n. 2 

Slavs at opening of the Middle Ages, 
6. See Russia 

Smo lensk', 499 

Sobieski (so'bye ske), John, 362 

Social Democrats, German, 566 n. 3 

Socialism, 5S3 

Soissons (swas'soh"), battle of, 9 

Solferino (sol fe re'nd), battle of, 546 
n. I 

Sol'y man, the Magnificent, Sultan, 
rival of Charles V, 288 

Somme (som), first battle of the, 644 
n. 2 

So'to, Hernando de, 258 n. i 

South Africa, England in, 594-596 ; 
Union of, 596 ; in the World War, 
596, 662 

Spain, conquest of, by Saracens, 52 ; 
early history, 204-207 ; union of 
Castile and Aragon, 204; conquest 
of Granada, 205 ; influence upon 
national character of the Moorish 
domination and wars, 206; the In- 
quisition under Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella, 206; under Charles V, 286- 
292; under Philip II, 292-295; 
under Philip 1X1,295; war with Eng- 
land, 318-320; war with the Nether- 
lands, 324-334 ; in the Napoleonic 
Era, 491, 492 

Spanish colonies, beginnings, 260 

Spanish Fury, the, 329 

Spanish Netherlands, War of the, 361 

Spanish Succession, War of the, 364 ; 
England's gains in, 421 

Spenser, Edmund, 323 

Spinning jenny invented, 430 

Stanley, Henry M., 5S7, 588 

Star Chamber, court of, 376 n. i 

States-General, French, 199; of 1789, 

447 
Statute for the Burning of Heretics, 

195 
Statute of Laborers, 189 
Stein (stin). Baron vom, 498 
Stephen of Blois (blwji), king of 

England, loi n. 2 
Stephenson, George, 579 
Stirling, battle of, 185 n. i 
Stoessel (stes'sel), Russian general, 

607 n. I 



692 



INDEX 



Strafford (Thomas Wentworth), Earl 

of, 375. 377. 378 
Striil'sund, siege of, 344 n. i 
Strasburg (Ger. Strassburg; Fr. Stras- 
bourg), seized by Louis XIV, 362 
Strassburg (stras'biirc), oath of, 66 

n. I 
Streltsi, the, disbanded, 405 
Stuart, House of, in England, 370 
Stylites (sti ll'tes, Simeon, 24 
Submarine warfare, German, 641, 

648, 664-666 
Suevi (swe vi), 15 
Suez Canal, 523 
Sully (sul'i), Duke of, 340 
Siin'na, the, 50 

Sun'nites, Moslem sect, 53 n. i 
Supremacy, Act of, under Henry 

VIII, 304; under Elizabeth, 315 
Supreme Being, worship of, 467 
Surat (&00 rat'), English at, 373 
Sweden, in Thirty Years' War, 344- 
347 ; gain in Peace of Westphalia, 
347; under Charles XII, 406; 
union with Norway, 509 n. i. See 
Calmar, Union of 
Swiss Confederation, the, rise of, 212 ; 
French intervention in, 474 ; as a 
federal state, 557 n. 3 
Swiss Guards, of Tuileries, 457, 458 
Switzerland. See Swiss Confedera- 
tion 
Syagrius (sT a'gri us), 9 
Syria, conquest of, by Saracens, 51 

Taj Mahal (fazh ma hal'), the, 146 

Talleyrand (tal'i rand), at the Resto- 
ration, 501 

Tam er lane'. See Tinni7- 

Tancred (tang'kred), 120 

Tannenberg (tan'nen beru), battle of, 
640 n. 2 

Tell, William, legend of, 213 

Templars, order of the, origin, 121 
n. I ; abolition of, 199 

Temple of Peace, the, 614 n. 2 

Terror, Reign of, 463-470 

Test Act, 532 

Tetzel, John, 269, 270 

Teutonic Knights, order of the, origin, 
121; in Baltic region, 128; prop- 
erty secularized, 276 

Teutons, capacity for improvement, 
4; kingdoms established by, 7-13; 
their conversion, 14-22; fusion 



with the Latins, 35-42; person- 
ality of Teutonic laws, 37 ; ordeals 
among, 38-40 

The od o nc, king of the Ostrogoths, 
7,8 

Thessaly, 572 n. i 

Thiers (tyer), M., French president, 
522 n. 2 

Third Estate, the, beginnings of, in 
the towns, 164; French, under 
the Bourbons, 440-442 ; in States- 
General, 447-450 

Thirty Years' War, the, 343-350 

Thomas Becket, 177-179; shrine 
destroyed, 305 

Thor, German deity, 16 

Thorvaldsen (tor'viild zen), 458 n. 2 

Tiberine Republic of 1798, 474 

Tiers Etat (tyar'za'ta"). See Third 
Estate 

Tilly, 344, 345 

Tilsit, Treaty of, 4S7-4S9 

Timur (te moor'), Mongol conqueror, 
146 

Tintoretto (tin t5 ret'to), 240 n. 2 

Titian (tish'an), 240 

Tobacco introduced into Europe, 
321 n. 2 

Todleben (tot'la ben), 573 

To'go, Japanese admiral, 607 n. i 

Toleration, religious, influence upon, 
of the Protestant Reformation, 284 

Toul (tool), 347 

Tournament (toor'na ment), the, 90 

Tours (tobr), battle of, 52, 53 

Tower of London, 99 

Towns, effects upon, of Crusades, 
130, 131 ; suffer from barbarian in- 
vasion, 151 ; rapid growth in tenth 
and eleventh centuries, 151, 152; 
status of the chartered towns, 153, 
154 ; their industrial life, 154 ; they 
enter the feudal system, 152-154; 
their revolt, 153; towns in Ger- 
many, 155-157; in Italy, 157-161; 
their services to civilization, 161- 
165; their representatives in 
national assemblies, 164, 165 n. i ; 
centers of new intellectual life, 
165. See Hanseatic League and 
Italian eity-repiiblics 

Traf al giir', naval battle of, 4S6 

Trans-Siberian Railway, 602 

Transvaal, the, 595 ; becomes Trans- 
vaal Colony, 595 



-r 



INDEX 



693 



Tran syl va'ni a, 645 

Treb'i zond, 644 n. 2 

Treitschke (trltsh'ke), Professor, 
quoted, 621 

Trek, The Great, 594 

Trent, Church Council of, 279 

Trentino (tren te'no) ceded to Italy, 
670 n. I 

Trianon (tre a nofi') palace, 667 

Trieste (tre est') ceded to Italy, 670 
n. I 

Triple Alliance, of 1882, 565 

Triple Entente (oii toht'), the, 624 

Trip's li, seized by Italy. 631 

Trou'ba dours, the, 202-204 

Trouveurs (trob'ver"), the, 203 

Troyes (trwa), Treaty of, 190 n. i 

Truce of God, 113, 114 

Truce of 1609, ;^2i^ 

Tudor, House of, 298 n. i 

Tudor, Owen, 183 

Tuileries (twe'le riz), 461 

Tunis, French protectorate, 597-598 

Turanians. See Jl/ongo/s and Tiii-ks 

Turgot (tiir go'), 447 

Turks, Ottoman, beginnings of their 
empire, 148; they capture Con- 
stantinople, 162; wars with Russia 
(1828-1829), 570; (1853-1856), 572 ; 
(1877-1878), 573-575; in the World 
War, 643 n. 2 

Turks, Seljuk, 1 1 1 ; power broken, 
117 

Two Sicilies. See xVaples, Kitigdotn of 

Uitlanders (oit'land erz), 595 

Ukraine (u'kran), 652 

Ul'fi las, apostle of the Goths, 14 

Ulm (oolm), 4S6 

Ulster, plantation of, 373 

Uniformity, Act of, under Edward VI, 

311 ; under Elizabeth, 315 
Union (parliamentary) of England, 

with Scotland, 421; with Ireland, 

535 
United Provinces. See A'eiherlands 
United States, independence of, 427 ; 
expansion of, 602, 603 ; purchases 
Danish West Indian islands, 602 
n. I ; enters the World War, 650- 
652 ; preparations during 1917, 652 ; 
her effort in 1918, 657-660 
Universities, rise of the, 166, 167 ; 
faculties, 167 n. i ; "Nations" in, 
167 ; students and student life, 168; 



studies and methods of instruction, 

169-17 1. See Schoolmen 
Unterwalden (oon'ter val"den), 212 
Uri (ob'ri), 212 
U to'pi a, More's, 309 
Utrecht (ii'trekt). Treaty of, 329 ; 

Peace of, 365 

Val'la, Laurentius, 245 
Valmy (viil me'), battle of, 459 
Valois (val wa'). House of, 200 n. i ; 
history of France under the mediae- 
val Valois sovereigns, 200-202 
Vandals, kingdom of the, 9; destroyed 

by Belisarius, 9 
Vane, Sir Henry, 382 ; death, 390 
Vassy (va se'), massacre of, 336 
•Vat'i can, the, 550 
Vaudois (vo dwa'), 290 
Vaux (v6), Pierre de, 290 n. i 
Vendee (von da'). La, 461 
Ve ne'tia, ceded to Austria, 472 ; 
joined to Napoleon's kingdom of 
Italy, 485 ; becomes part of the 
new kingdom of Italy (1866), 548 
Venice, takes part in Fourth Crusade, 
123, 124; sketch of history, 158- 
160; ceremony of wedding the 
Adriatic, 158, 159; her "Arsenal," 

159 

Venice, Peace of, 135 

Ventoux (von too'). Mount, 231 n. i 

Ver duii'. Treaty of, 66; German siege 
of (1916), 644 

Veronese (va ro na'za), 240 n. 2 

Versailles (ver salz' ; Fr. pron. ver- 
say'), palace of, 366; Treaty of 
(1919), 666-670 

Vesle (val), river, 660 

Vespucci, Amerigo (ves poot'che, 
a ma re'go), 252 

Victor Emmanuel I, king of Sardinia, 
reactionary policy of, 541 ; abdica- 
tion of, 541 ; II, 544 ; king of Italy, 
546, 547 ; III, 549 n. I 

Vienna (vi en'a), siege of (1683), 362 ; 
Congress of, 505-512 

Villafranca (vel la frang'ka), Peace of, 
^.546 

Villain. See Se7-fs 

Vimy Ridge, 663 

Virginia, origin of name, 321 

Visigoths, kingdom of the, 8 

Vlad'i mir the Great, of Russia, 21 

Vladivostok (via de v5s t5k'), 602 



694 



INDEX 



Vogelweide (fo"gel vl'de), Walther 

von der, 215 n. i 
Voltaire (vol ter'), 443 

Wager of battle. See Ordeals 
Wagram (va'gram), battle of, 493 
Wal den'ses, 2S9 
Waldo (val d5'), Peter, 290 n. i 
Wales, conquest of, 183 
Wallace, Sir William, 185 
Wallachia (wo la'ki a), 474 n. 2 
Wallenstein (wolenstln; Ger. pron. 

val'len stin), 344, 345, 346 
Walpole, Sir Robert, 423 
Walter the Penniless, 120 n. i 
Wardship, feudal right of, 78 n. i 
Warsaw, Grand Duchy of, 488 
Wartburg (vart'boorc), Luther at, 274 
Waterloo, battle of, 503 
Watt, James, 430 
Wed'more, Treaty of, 72 
Wellesley, vSir Arthur. See IJ^elluig- 

i07t 

Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke 
of, in Portugal, 491 ; at \\'aterloo, 

Wentworth, Thomas. See Strafford 

W^eser (va'zer), river, 347 

Wesley, Charles, 424 

Wesley, John, 424 

Western Empire (Teutonic). See 

Charlemagne and Holy Roman 

Empire 
Westphalia, kingdom of, 489 ; Peace 

of, 347 

West Prussia, given to the new 
Poland, 668 

Whigs, representatives of Liberalism, 
527 

Whitby, Council of, iS 

Whitefield (hwit'feld), George, 424 

Wieland (ve'lant), 492 

Wilberforce, William, 429 

Wilhelmina, of Bayreuth, on Peter 
the Great, 404 n. i 

William I, the Conqueror, king of 
England, prepares to invade Eng- 
land, 97 ; victory at Hastings, 97 ; 
his reign, 98-101 ; 11, the Red, lor 
n. 2; in, 396-398 

William I of Orange, the Silent, 
stadtholder, mentioned, 326; his 



character, 327; his "Apology," 330; 
his death, 331 ; IH, invited to Eng- , .^ 
land (1688), 394; his reign as king T 
of England, 396-398 ■■ 

William L German Emperor, as king 
of Prussia, 558 ; Emperor, 563 ; 
death, 566; IL accession, 566; 
reign up to the World War, 566, 
567; utterances of, 617, 618; ex- 
tradition of, demanded of Holland 
by the Allies, 669 n. 2 

Wilson, President, address to Senate 
(January 22, 1917), 649; address to 
Congress (April 2, 1917), 650 

Windmills introduced into Europe 
by Crusades, 130, 131 n. i 

Win'frid, apostle of Germany, 20 

Wink'el rled, Arnold of, 212 n. 2 

Wisby (wiz'bT), 156 

Wit'an, the, 97 n. 2 ; becomes the 
English Parliament, 102 

Wit"e na ge mot'. See IVitan 

Wo'den, German god, 16 

Wolfe, James, 426 

Wolsey, Cardinal, minister of Henry 
Vni, 300; death, 302 

Worcester, battle of, 384 

World War, the, 616-672 

Worms (vorms). Concordat of, 108; 
Diet of, 273 

Wren, Sir Christopher, 391 n. i 

Wiirtemberg (viirt'tem berc), king- 
dom of, 485 ; in German Empire, 

553 
Wycliffe (wTk'lif), John, 195 

Xavier (zav'i er), Francis, 282 

Yezd, city, 51 n. 2 

\'ork. House of, 177 n. i. See Roses, 

Wars of the 
Young Turks, the, 628 
Yser (e'zr), river, 638 n. i 
"S'uste (yoos'ta), 291 

Zaandam (zan dam'), 404 
Zend-Avesta, the, 51 
Zimmerman, German foreign minis- 
ter, 649 
Zorn'dorf (tsorn'dorf), battle of, 416 
Zwingli (zwing'le), Huldreich, 277 
Zwinghans, 277 



